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diff --git a/27025-h/27025-h.htm b/27025-h/27025-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4b2180a --- /dev/null +++ b/27025-h/27025-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,8314 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Old Familiar Faces</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.headingsummary { margin-left: 5%;} + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Old Familiar Faces, by Theodore Watts-Dunton</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Old Familiar Faces, by Theodore Watts-Dunton + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Old Familiar Faces + + +Author: Theodore Watts-Dunton + + + +Release Date: October 25, 2008 [eBook #27025] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD FAMILIAR FACES*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1916 E. P. Dutton and Company edition by +david Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to +<a href="http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/libraries/">Kensington Central +Library</a> for providing the copy from which the illustrations +are taken.</p> +<h1>OLD<br /> +FAMILIAR<br /> +FACES</h1> +<p style="text-align: center">BY<br /> +THEODORE<br /> +WATTS-DUNTON</p> +<p style="text-align: center">AUTHOR OF<br /> +“AYLWIN”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">NEW YORK<br /> +E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY<br /> +MCMXVI</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page 4--><a +name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span><span +class="smcap">The Athenæum Press</span>,<span +class="smcap"> London, England</span>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p0b.jpg"> +<img alt="Mrs. William Morris. “She was the most lovely +woman I have ever known, her beauty was +incredible.”—Theodore Watts-Dunton" +src="images/p0s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h2><!-- page 5--><a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +5</span>INTRODUCTION.</h2> +<p>For some years before his death it was the intention of +Theodore Watts-Dunton to publish in volume form under the title +of ‘Old Familiar Faces,’ the recollections of his +friends that he had from time to time contributed to <i>The +Athenæum</i>. Had his range of interests been less +wide he might have found the time in which to further this and +many other literary projects he had formed; but he was, +unfortunately, very slow to write, and slower still to +publish. His long life produced in published works a number +of critical and biographical essays contributed to periodicals +and encyclopædias, a romance (‘Aylwin’), a +sheaf of poems (‘The Coming of Love’), two of the +most stimulating critical pronouncements that his century +produced (‘Poetry’ and ‘The Renascence of +Wonder’), a handful of introductions to classics—and +that is all.</p> +<p>Only those who were frequent visitors at “The +Pines” can form any idea of his keen interest in life and +affairs, which seemed to grow rather than to diminish with the +passage of each year, even when 81 had passed him by. At +his charmingly situated house at the foot of Putney Hill, he +lived a life of as little seclusion as he would have lived in +<!-- page 6--><a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +6</span>Fleet Street. Here he received his friends and +acquaintances, and there was little happening in the world +outside with which he was unacquainted.</p> +<p>He was a tremendous worker, and only a few months before his +death he wrote of “the enormous pressure of work” +that was upon him, telling his correspondent that he had +“no idea, no one can have any idea, what it is. I am +an early riser and breakfast at seven, and from that hour until +seven in the evening, I am in full swing of my labours with the +aid of two most intelligent secretaries.”</p> +<p>To outlive his generation is, perhaps, the worst fate that can +befall a man; but this cannot truly be said of Theodore +Watts-Dunton, who seemed to be of no generation in +particular. His interest in the life of the twentieth +century, a life so different from that of his own youth and early +manhood, was strangely keen and insistent. Sometimes in +talking of his great contemporaries, Tennyson, Meredith, +Swinburne, Rossetti, Morris, Matthew Arnold, Borrow, there would +creep into his voice a note of reminiscent sadness; but it always +seemed poetic rather than personal. It may be said that he +never really grew up, that his spirit never tired. His +laugh was as youthful as the hearty “My dear fellow,” +with which he would address his friends.</p> +<p>His most remarkable quality was his youth. <!-- page +7--><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>His body +had aged, his voice had shrunk; but once launched into the +subject of literature, Greek verse in particular (he regarded the +Attic tongue as the peculiar vehicle for poetic expression), he +seemed immediately to become a young man. When quoting his +favourite passage from Keats, his voice would falter with +emotion.</p> +<blockquote><p>Charm’d magic casements, opening on the +foam<br /> +Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These lines he regarded as the finest in English poetry.</p> +<p>He possessed the great gift of conversation. Every +subject seemed to develope quite naturally out of that which had +preceded it, and although in a single hour he would have passed +from Æschylus and Sophocles to twentieth-century +publishers, there was never any break or suspicion of a change of +topic. Seated on the sofa in the middle of his study, with +reminders of his friendship with Rossetti gazing down upon him +from the walls, he welcomed his friends with that almost boyish +cordiality that so endeared him to their hearts. If they +had been doing anything of which the world knew, he would be sure +to have heard all about it. His mind was as alert as his +memory was remarkable; but above all he was possessed of a very +real charm, a charm that did not vanish before the on-coming +years. It was this quality of interesting himself in the +doings of <!-- page 8--><a name="page8"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 8</span>others that retained for him the +friendships that his personality and cordiality had created.</p> +<p>Few men have been so richly endowed with great friendships as +Theodore Watts-Dunton: Swinburne, the Rossettis, William Morris, +Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, Borrow, Lowell, Latham, men of vastly +dissimilar temperaments; yet he was on terms of intimacy with +them all, and as they one by one passed away, to him was left the +sad duty of giving to the world by far the most intimate picture +of their various personalities. There was obviously some +subtle quality in Watts-Dunton’s nature that not only +attracted to him great minds in the world of art and letters; but +which seemed to hold captive their affection for a +lifetime. Even an instinctive recluse such as Borrow, a man +almost too sensitive for friendship, found in Watts-Dunton one +whose capacity for friendship was so great as to override all +other considerations. Watts-Dunton was “the friend of +friends” to Rossetti, who wished to make him his heir, and +was dissuaded only when he saw that to do so would pain his +friend, who regarded it as an act of injustice to +Rossetti’s own family. During his lifetime Swinburne +desired to make over to him his entire fortune. The man to +whom these tributes were paid was undoubtedly possessed of some +rare and strange gift.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p8b.jpg"> +<img alt="Algernon Charles Swinburne" src="images/p8s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The greatest among his many great friendships <!-- page 9--><a +name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>was with +Swinburne. For thirty years they lived together at +“The Pines” in the closest unity and accord. +They would take their walks together, discuss the hundred and one +things in which they were both interested, living, not as great +men sometimes live, a frigid existence of intellectual +loneliness; but showing the keenest interest in the affairs of +the everyday, as well as of the literary, world. When death +at last severed the link that it had taken upwards of thirty +years to forge, it is not strange that there should be no +reminiscences written of the man who had been to Watts-Dunton +more than a brother.</p> +<p>It was not always easy to get Watts-Dunton to talk of those he +had known so intimately; but when he did so it was frankly and +freely. Once when telling of some characteristic act of +generosity on the part of that strangely composite being, half +genius, half schoolboy, William Morris, he remarked, “Yes, +Morris was a very dear friend of mine; but he had strange +limitations. Swinburne had the utmost contempt for the +narrowness of his outlook. It was incredible! Outside +his own domain he was unintelligent in his narrowness, and +frequently bored and irritated his friends.”</p> +<p>As artist, poet, and craftsman, however, Watts-Dunton spoke +with enthusiasm of Morris; <!-- page 10--><a +name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>but +intellectually he regarded him as inferior to Mrs. Morris. +On the day following the announcement of her death, the present +writer happened to be taking tea at “The Pines,” and +the conversation not unnaturally turned upon the Morrises. +Watts-Dunton called attention to the large number of magnificent +Rossetti portraits of her that hung from the walls of his +study. “A remarkable woman,” he said, “a +most remarkable woman; superior to Morris intellectually, she +reached a greater mental height than he was capable of, yet few +knew it.” Then he proceeded to tell how she had +acquired French and Italian with the greatest ease and +facility. When Morris had met her she possessed very few +educational advantages; yet she very quickly made good her +shortcomings. When reminded that Mr. H. Buxton Forman had +recently written that he had seen beautiful women in all quarters +of the globe, “but never one so strangely lovely and +majestic as Mrs. Morris,” Watts-Dunton remarked, “She +was the most lovely woman I have ever known, her beauty was +incredible.”</p> +<p>In answer to a question he went on to say that Rossetti +painted her lips with the utmost faithfulness. In spite of +her beauty and her high mental qualities, she was very shy and +retiring, almost fearful, in her attitude towards others.</p> +<p>In literature and criticism Watts-Dunton <!-- page 11--><a +name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>stood for +enthusiasm. His gospel as a critic was to seek for the good +that is to be found in most things, literary or otherwise; and +what is, perhaps, most remarkable in one who has known so many +great men, he never seemed to draw invidious comparisons between +the writers and artists of to-day and those of the great +Victorian Era.</p> +<p>Life at “The Pines” was as bright as naturally +cheerful and bright people could make it, people who were not +only attracted to and interested in each other; but found the +world an exceedingly good place in which to live. The home +circle was composed of Swinburne, Watts-Dunton, his two sisters, +Miss Watts and Mrs. Mason. To these must be added Mr. +Thomas Hake, for many years Watts-Dunton’s friend and +secretary, who was in daily attendance. Later the circle +was enlarged by the entry into it of the young and accomplished +bride, the present Mrs. Watts-Dunton.</p> +<p>“The Pines” would have seemed a strange place +without “the Colonel,” as Watts-Dunton always called +Mr. Hake, adopting a family name given to him when a boy on +account of his likeness to his cousin, General, then Colonel, +Gordon. Nothing amused Watts-Dunton more than for some +caller to start discussing army matters with the supposed +ex-officer. He would watch with a mischievous glee Mr. +Hake’s endeavours to carry on a conversation <!-- page +12--><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span>in +which he had no special interest. Watts-Dunton never +informed callers of their mistake, and to this day there is one +friend of twenty-five years’ standing, a man keenly +interested in National Defence, who regards Mr. Hake as an +authority upon army matters.</p> +<p>“No living man knew Borrow so well as Thomas +Hake,” Watts-Dunton once remarked to a friend. To the +young Hakes Lavengro was a great joy, and they would often +accompany him part of his way home from Coombe End. On one +occasion Borrow said to the youngest boy, “Do you know how +to fight a man bigger than yourself?” The lad +confessed that he did not. “Well,” said Borrow, +“You challenge him to fight, and when he is taking off his +coat, you hit him in the stomach as hard as you can and run for +your life.”</p> +<p>Swinburne and Watts-Dunton had first met in 1872. In +1879 they went to live together at “The Pines,” and +from that date were never parted until Swinburne’s death +thirty years’ later. In no literary friendship has +the bond been closer. Watts-Dunton’s first act each +morning was to visit Swinburne in his own room, where the poet +breakfasted alone with the morning newspapers. During the +morning the two would take their daily walk together, a practice +continued for many years. “There is no time like the +morning for a walk,” Swinburne would say, “The +sparkle, the exhilaration <!-- page 13--><a +name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>of it. +I walk every morning of my life, no matter what the weather, +pelting along all the time as fast as I can go.” His +perfect health he attributed entirely to this habit.</p> +<p>In later years he would take his walks alone. It was +during one of these that he met with an adventure that seemed to +cause him some irritation. A young artist hearing that +“the master” walked each day up Putney Hill lay in +wait for him. After several unsuccessful ventures he at +length saw a figure approaching which he instantly +recognized. Crossing the road the youth went boldly up and +said:—</p> +<p>“If you are Mr. Swinburne, may I shake hands with +you?”</p> +<p>“Eh?” remarked the astonished poet.</p> +<p>The young man repeated his request in a louder voice, +remembering Swinburne’s deafness, adding:—</p> +<p>“It is my ambition to shake hands with you, +sir.”</p> +<p>“Oh! very well,” was the response, as Swinburne +half-heartedly extended his hand, “I’m not accustomed +to this sort of thing.”</p> +<p>Meal times at “The Pines” were occasions when +there was much talk and laughter; for in both Swinburne and +Watts-Dunton the mischievous spirit of boyhood had not been +entirely disciplined by life, and in the other members of the +household the same unconquerable spirit of youth was +manifest. <!-- page 14--><a name="page14"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 14</span>Sometimes there were great +discussions and arguments. Watts-Dunton had more than a +passing interest in science, whereas, to Swinburne it was +anathema, although his father was strongly scientific in his +learning. The libraries of the two men clearly showed how +different were their tastes; for that of Watts-Dunton was +all-embracing, Swinburne’s was as exclusive as his circle +of personal friends. The one was the library of a critic, +the other that of a poet.</p> +<p>Swinburne enjoyed nothing better than a discussion, and he was +a foe who wielded a stout blade. He fought, however, with +scrupulous fairness, never interrupting an adversary; but +listening to him with a deliberate patience that was almost +disconcerting. Then when his turn came he would overwhelm +his opponent and destroy his most weighty arguments in what a +friend once described as “a lava torrent of burning +words.” He possessed many of the qualities necessary +to debate: concentration, the power of pouncing upon the weak +spot in his adversary’s argument, and above all a wonderful +memory. What he lacked was that calm and calculating +frigidity so necessary to the successful debater. Instead +of freezing his opponent to silence with deliberate logic, he +would strive rather by the tempestuous quality of his rhetoric to +hurl him into the next parish.</p> +<p><!-- page 15--><a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +15</span>There were times when he would work himself up into a +passion of denunciation, when, trembling and quivering in every +limb, he would in a fine frenzy of scorn annihilate those whom he +conceived to be his enemies, and in scathing periods pour +ridicule upon their works. But if he were merciless in his +onslaughts upon his foes, he was correspondingly loyal in the +defence of his friends. He seemed as incapable of seeing +the weakness of a friend as of appreciating the strength of an +enemy.</p> +<p>The things and the people who did not interest him he had the +fortunate capacity of entirely forgetting. A friend <a +name="citation15"></a><a href="#footnote15" +class="citation">[15]</a> tells of how on one occasion he +happened to mention in the course of conversation a book by a +certain author whom he knew had been a visitor at “The +Pines” on several occasions, and as such was personally +known to Swinburne.</p> +<p>“Oh! really,” Swinburne remarked, “Yes, now +that you mention it, I believe someone of that name has been so +good as to come and see us. I seem to recall him, and I +seem to remember hearing someone say that he had written +something, though I don’t remember exactly what. So +he has published a book upon the subject of which we are +talking. Really? I did not know.”</p> +<p>All this was said with perfect courtesy and <!-- page 16--><a +name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>without the +least intention of administering a snub or belittling the writer +in question. Swinburne had merely forgotten because there +was nothing in that author’s personality that had impressed +itself upon him. On the other hand, he would remember the +minutest details of conversations in which he had been +interested.</p> +<p>In spite of his capacity for passionate outbursts and inspired +invective, Swinburne was a most attentive listener, provided +there were things being said to which it was worth +listening. At meal times when his attention became engaged +he would forget everything but the conversation. +Indifferent as to what stage of the meal he was at, he would turn +to whoever it might be that had introduced the subject, and would +talk or listen oblivious of the fact that food might be +spoiling. Fortunately, he was a small eater.</p> +<p>On one occasion when lunching at “The Pines” Mr. +Coulson Kernahan happened to remark that he had in his pocket a +copy of Christina Rossetti’s then unpublished poem, +‘The Death of a First-born,’ written in memory of the +Duke of Clarence. Down went knife and fork as Swinburne +half rose from his chair to reach across the table for the +manuscript. “She is as a god to mortals when compared +to most other living women poets,” he exclaimed. +Then, in his thin-high-pitched, but exquisitely <!-- page 17--><a +name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>modulated +voice he half read, half chanted, two stanzas of the poem.</p> +<blockquote><p>One young life lost, two happy young lives +blighted<br /> + With earthward eyes we see:<br /> +With eyes uplifted, keener, farther sighted<br /> + We look, O Lord to thee.</p> +<p>Grief hears a funeral knell: hope hears the ringing<br /> + Of birthday bells on high.<br /> +Faith, Hope and Love make answer with soft singing,<br /> + Half carol and half cry.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He stopped abruptly refusing to read the third and last stanza +because it was unequal, and the poem was stronger and finer by +its omission. Then he said in a hushed voice, “For +the happy folk who are able to think as she thinks, who believe +as she believes, the poem is of its kind perfect.”</p> +<p>With glowing eyes and with hand that marked time to the music, +he read once more the second verse, repeating the line, +“half carol and half cry” three times, lowering his +voice with each repetition until it became little more than a +whisper. Laying the manuscript reverently beside him, he +sat perfectly still for a space with brooding eyes, then rising +silently left the room with short swift strides. <a +name="citation17"></a><a href="#footnote17" +class="citation">[17]</a></p> +<p>Many of Swinburne’s friends have testified to his +personal charm and courtliness of bearing. +“Unmistakably an aristocrat, and with <!-- page 18--><a +name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>all the ease +and polish which one associates with high breeding, there was, +even in the cordiality with which he would rise and come forward +to welcome a visitor a suspicion of the shy nervousness of the +introspective man and of the recluse on first facing a +stranger.” Mr. Coulson Kernahan has said, “I +have seen him angry, I have heard him furiously dissent from, and +even denounce the views put forward by others, but never once was +what, for want of a better word, I must call his personal +deference to those others relaxed.</p> +<p>“To no one would he defer quite so graciously and +readily, to no one was he so scrupulously courtly in bearing as +to those who constituted his own household.”</p> +<p>If he felt that he had monopolized the conversation he would +turn to Watts-Dunton and apologize, and for a time become +transformed into an attentive listener.</p> +<p>Lord Ronald Gower writes of Swinburne’s remarkable +powers as a talker. Telling of a luncheon at “The +Pines” in 1879, he writes:—“Swinburne’s +talk after luncheon was wonderful . . . What, far beyond the +wonderful flow of words of the poet, struck me, was his real +diffidence and modesty; while fully aware of the divine gifts +within him, he is as simple and unaffected as a child.” <a +name="citation18"></a><a href="#footnote18" +class="citation">[18]</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p18b.jpg"> +<img alt="Theodore Watts-Dunton" src="images/p18s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>But conversation at “The Pines” was not <!-- page +19--><a name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +19</span>always of the serious things of life. It very +frequently partook of the playful, when the hearers would be kept +amused with a humour and whimsicality, cauterized now and then +with some biting touch of satire which showed that neither +Swinburne nor Watts-Dunton had entirely grown up.</p> +<p>Reading aloud was also a greatly favoured form of +entertainment. Swinburne was a sympathetic reader, +possessed of a voice of remarkable quality and power of +expression, and he would read for the hour together from Dickens, +Lamb, Charles Reade, and Thackeray. To Mrs. Mason’s +little boy he was a wizard who could open many magic +casements. He would carry off the lad to his own room, and +there read to him the stories which caused the hour of bedtime to +be dreaded. When the nurse arrived to fetch the child to +bed he would imperiously wave her away, hoping that Swinburne +would not notice the action and so bring the evening’s +entertainment to a close. On one occasion the child stole +down to Swinburne’s room after he had been safely put to +bed, where the interrupted story was renewed. When +eventually discovered both seemed to regard the incident as a +huge joke, and Swinburne carried the child to the nursery and +tucked him up for the night.</p> +<p>A great capacity for friendship involves an equally great meed +of sorrow. At last the <!-- page 20--><a +name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span>hour arrived +when the friend who was nearer to him than a brother followed +those who one by one he had mourned, and of the old familiar +faces there were left to him only the two sisters, whose love and +devotion had contributed so much to his domestic happiness, and +his friend, Mr. Thomas Hake, who for seventeen years had acted as +confidential secretary.</p> +<h2><!-- page 21--><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +21</span>CONTENTS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">page</span>.</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page5">5</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>I.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">George Borrow</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page25">25</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>II.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Dante Gabriel Rossetti</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page69">69</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>III.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Alfred</span>,<span class="smcap"> +Lord Tennyson</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page120">120</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>IV.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Christina Georgina Rossetti</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page177">177</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>V.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Dr. Gordon Hake</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page207">207</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>VI.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">John Leicester Warren</span>, <span +class="smcap">Lord de Tabley</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page219">219</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>VII.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">William Morris</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page240">240</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>VIII.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Francis Hindes Groome</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page277">277</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><!-- page 23--><a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +23</span>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Mrs. William Morris</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>Frontispiece</i></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">A. C. Swinburne</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right">to face page <span +class="indexpageno"><a href="#page8">8</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Theodore Watts-Dunton</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page18">18</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Dante Gabriel Rossetti</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page70">70</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Alfred, Lord Tennyson, +æt</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page80">80</a></span>, <span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page120">120</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Christina Rossetti</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page178">178</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Mrs. Rossetti</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page182">182</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Dr. Gordon Hake</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page208">208</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">William Morris</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page240">240</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Francis Hindes Groome</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page278">278</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><!-- page 25--><a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +25</span>I. GEORGE BORROW.<br /> +1803–1881.</h2> +<h3>I.</h3> +<p>I have been reading those charming reminiscences of George +Borrow which appeared in <i>The Athenæum</i>. <a +name="citation25"></a><a href="#footnote25" +class="citation">[25]</a> I have been reading them, I may +add, under the happiest conditions for enjoying them—amid +the self-same heather and bracken where I have so often listened +to Lavengro’s quaint talk of all the wondrous things he saw +and heard in his wondrous life. So graphically has Mr. Hake +depicted him, that as I walked and read his paper I seemed to +hear the fine East-Anglian accent of the well-remembered +voice—I seemed to see the mighty figure, strengthened by +the years rather than stricken by them, striding along between +the whin bushes or through the quags, now stooping over the water +to pluck the wild mint he loved, whose lilac-coloured blossoms +perfumed the air as he crushed them, now stopping to watch the +water-wagtail by the ponds as he descanted upon the powers of +that enchanted bird—powers, like many human endowments, +more glorious than pleasant, if it is sober truth, as Borrow +would gravely tell, that the gipsy lad who knocks a water-wagtail +<!-- page 26--><a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +26</span>on the head with a stone gains for a bride a +“ladye from a far countrie,” and dazzles with his +good luck all the other black-eyed young urchins of the +dingle.</p> +<p>Though my own intimacy with Borrow did not begin till he was +considerably advanced in years, and ended on his finally quitting +London for Oulton, there were circumstances in our +intercourse—circumstances, I mean, connected partly with +temperament and partly with mutual experience—which make me +doubt whether any one understood him better than I did, or broke +more thoroughly through that exclusiveness of temper which +isolated him from all but a few. However, be this as it +may, no one at least realized more fully than I how lovable was +his nature, with all his angularities—how simple and +courageous, how manly and noble. His shyness, his apparent +coldness, his crotchety obstinacy, repelled people, and +consequently those who at any time during his life really +understood him must have been very few. How was it, then, +that such a man wandered about over Europe and fraternized so +completely with a race so suspicious and intractable as the +gipsies? A natural enough question, which I have often been +asked, and this is my reply:—</p> +<p>Those who know the gipsies will understand me when I say that +this suspicious and wary race of wanderers—suspicious and +wary from <!-- page 27--><a name="page27"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 27</span>an instinct transmitted through ages +of dire persecutions from the Children of the Roof—will +readily fraternize with a blunt, single-minded, and shy eccentric +like Borrow, while perhaps the skilful man of the world may find +all his tact and <i>savoir faire</i> useless and, indeed, in the +way. And the reason of this is not far to seek, +perhaps. What a gipsy most dislikes is the feeling that his +“gorgio” interlocutor is thinking about him; for, +alas! to be the object of “gorgio” thoughts—has +it not been a most dangerous and mischievous honour to every +gipsy since first his mysterious race was driven to accept the +grudging hospitality of the Western world? A gipsy hates to +be watched, and knows at once when he is being watched; for in +tremulous delicacy of apprehension his organization is far beyond +that of an Englishman, or, indeed, of any member of any of the +thick-fingered races of Europe. One of the results of this +excessive delicacy is that a gipsy can always tell to a surety +whether a “gorgio” companion is thinking about him, +or whether the “gorgio’s” thoughts are really +and genuinely occupied with the fishing rod, the net, the gin, +the gun, or whatsoever may be the common source of interest that +has drawn them together.</p> +<p>Now, George Borrow, after the first one or two awkward +interviews were well over, would lapse into a kind of unconscious +ruminating <!-- page 28--><a name="page28"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 28</span>bluntness, a pronounced and angular +self-dependence, which might well disarm the suspiciousness of +the most wary gipsy, from the simple fact that it was +genuine. Hence, as I say, among the few who understood +Borrow his gipsy friends very likely stood first—outside, +of course, his family circle. And surely this is an honour +to Borrow; for the gipsies, notwithstanding certain undeniable +obliquities in matters of morals and cusine, are the only people +left in the island who are still free from British vulgarity +(perhaps because they are not British). It is no less an +honour to them, for while he lived the island did not contain a +nobler English gentleman than him they called the “Romany +Rye.”</p> +<p>Borrow’s descriptions of gipsy life are, no doubt, too +deeply charged with the rich lights shed from his own personality +entirely to satisfy a more matter-of-fact observer, and I am not +going to say that he is anything like so photographic as F. H. +Groome, for instance, or so trustworthy. But then it should +never be forgotten that Borrow was, before everything else, a +poet. If this statement should be challenged by “the +present time,” let me tell the present time that by poet I +do not mean merely a man who is skilled in writing lyrics and +sonnets and that kind of thing, but primarily a man who has the +poetic gift of seeing through “the shows of things” +and knowing <!-- page 29--><a name="page29"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 29</span>where he is—the gift of +drinking deeply of the waters of life and of feeling grateful to +Nature for so sweet a draught; a man who, while acutely feeling +the ineffable pathos of human life, can also feel how sweet a +thing it is to live, having so great and rich a queen as Nature +for his mother, and for companions any number of such amusing +creatures as men and women. In this sense I cannot but set +Borrow, with his love of nature and his love of adventure, very +high among poets—as high, perhaps, as I place another +dweller in tents, Sylvester Boswell himself, “the +well-known and popalated gipsy of Codling Gap,” who, like +Borrow, is famous for “his great knowledge in grammaring +one of the ancientist langeges on record,” and whose +touching preference of a gipsy tent to a roof, “on the +accent of health, sweetness of the air, and for enjoying the +pleasure of Nature’s life,” is expressed with a +poetical feeling such as Chaucer might have known had he not, as +a court poet, been too genteel. “Enjoying the +pleasure of Nature’s life!” That is what Borrow +did; and how few there are that understand it.</p> +<p>The self-consciousness which in the presence of man produces +that kind of shyness which was Borrow’s characteristic left +him at once when he was with Nature alone or in the company of an +intimate friend. At her, no man’s gaze was more frank +and childlike than his. Hence <!-- page 30--><a +name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>the charm of +his books. No man’s writing can take you into the +country as Borrow’s can: it makes you feel the sunshine, +see the meadows, smell the flowers, hear the skylark sing and the +grasshopper chirrup. Who else can do it? I know of +none. And as to personal intercourse with him, if I were +asked what was the chief delight of this, I should say that it +was the delight of bracingness. A walking tour with a +self-conscious lover of the picturesque—an +“interviewer” of Nature with a +note-book—worrying you to admire <i>him</i> for admiring +Nature so much, is one of those occasional calamities of life +which a gentleman and a Christian must sometimes heroically bear, +but the very thought of which will paralyze with fear the +sturdiest Nature-worshipper, whom no crevasse or avalanche or +treacherous mist can appal. But a walk and talk with Borrow +as he strode through the bracken on an autumn morning had the +exhilarating effect upon his companion of a draught of the +brightest mountain air. And this was the result not, +assuredly, of any exuberance of animal spirits (Borrow, indeed, +was subject to fits of serious depression), but rather of a +feeling he induced that between himself and all nature, from the +clouds floating lazily over head to the scented heather, crisp +and purple, under foot, there was an entire fitness and +harmony—a sort of mutual understanding, indeed. There +was, I say, something <!-- page 31--><a name="page31"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 31</span>bracing in the very look of this +silvery-haired giant as he strode along with a kind of easy +sloping movement, like that of a St. Bernard dog (the most +deceptive of all movements as regards pace), his beardless face +(quite matchless for symmetrical beauty) beaded with the healthy +perspiration drops of strong exercise, and glowing and rosy in +the sun.</p> +<p>As a vigorous old man Borrow never had an equal, I +think. There has been much talk of the vigour of +Shelley’s friend, E. J. Trelawny. I knew that +splendid old corsair, and admired his agility of limb and brain; +but at seventy Borrow could have walked off with Trelawny under +his arm. At seventy years of age, after breakfasting at +eight o’clock in Hereford Square, he would walk to Putney, +meet one or more of us at Roehampton, roam about Wimbledon and +Richmond Park with us, bathe in the Fen Ponds with a north-east +wind cutting across the icy water like a razor, run about the +grass afterwards like a boy to shake off some of the water-drops, +stride about the park for hours, and then, after fasting for +twelve hours, eat a dinner at Roehampton that would have done Sir +Walter Scott’s eyes good to see. Finally, he would +walk back to Hereford Square, getting home late at night.</p> +<p>And if the physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, +unless he happened to be suffering from one of his occasional +fits of depression, <!-- page 32--><a name="page32"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 32</span>was still more so. Its +freshness, raciness, and eccentric whim no pen could +describe. There is a kind of humour the delight of which is +that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as +much or more to think that there is a mind so whimsical, +crotchety, and odd as to draw them. This was the humour of +Borrow. His command of facial expression—though he +seemed to exercise it almost involuntarily and +unconsciously—had, no doubt, much to do with this +charm. Once, when he was talking to me about the men of +Charles Lamb’s day—<i>The London Magazine</i> +set—I asked him what kind of a man was the notorious and +infamous Griffiths Wainewright. <a name="citation32"></a><a +href="#footnote32" class="citation">[32]</a> In a moment +Borrow’s face changed: his mouth broke into a Carker-like +smile, his eyes became elongated to an expression that was at +once fawning and sinister, as he said, “Wainewright! +He used to sit in an armchair close to the fire and <i>smile</i> +all the evening like <i>this</i>.” He made me see +Wainewright and hear his voice as plainly as though I had seen +him and heard him in the publishers’ parlour.</p> +<p>His vocabulary, rich in picturesque words of the high road and +dingle, his quaint countrified phrases, might also have added to +the <!-- page 33--><a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +33</span>effect of this kind of eccentric humour. “A +duncie book—of course it’s duncie—it’s +only duncie books that sell nowadays,” he would shout when +some new “immortal poem” or “greatest work of +the age” was mentioned. Tennyson, I fear, was the +representative duncie poet of the time; but that was because +nothing could ever make Borrow realize the fact that Tennyson was +not the latest juvenile representative of a “duncie” +age; for although, according to Leland, <a +name="citation33"></a><a href="#footnote33" +class="citation">[33]</a> the author of ‘Sordello’ is +(as is natural, perhaps) the only bard known in the gipsy tent, +it is doubtful whether even his name was more than a name to +Borrow; indeed, I think that people who had no knowledge of +Romany, Welsh, and Armenian were all more or less +“duncie.” As a trap to catch the “foaming +vipers,” his critics, he in ‘Lavengro’ +purposely misspelt certain Armenian and Welsh words, just to have +the triumph of saying in another volume that they who had +attacked him on so many points had failed to discover that he had +wrongly given “zhats” as the nominative of the +Armenian noun for bread, while everybody in England, especially +every critic, ought to know that “zhats” is the +accusative form.</p> +<p>I will try, however, to give the reader an <!-- page 34--><a +name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>idea of the +whim of Borrow’s conversation, by giving it in something +like a dramatic form. Let the reader suppose himself on a +summer’s evening at that delightful old roadside inn the +Bald-Faced Stag, in the Roehampton Valley, near Richmond Park, +where are sitting, over a “cup” (to use +Borrow’s word) of foaming ale, Lavengro himself, one of his +oldest friends, and a new acquaintance, a certain student of +things in general lately introduced to Borrow and nearly, but not +quite, admitted behind the hedge of Borrow’s shyness, as +may be seen by the initiated from a certain rather constrained, +half-resentful expression on his face. Jerry +Abershaw’s <a name="citation34"></a><a href="#footnote34" +class="citation">[34]</a> sword (the chief trophy of mine host) +has been introduced, and Borrow’s old friend has been +craftily endeavouring to turn the conversation upon that ever +fresh and fruitful topic, but in vain. Suddenly the song of +a nightingale, perched on a tree not far off, rings pleasantly +through the open window and fills the room with a new atmosphere +of poetry and romance. “That nightingale has as fine +a voice,” says Borrow, “as though he were born and +bred in the Eastern Counties.” Borrow is proud of +being <!-- page 35--><a name="page35"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 35</span>an East-Anglian, of which the student +has already been made aware and which he now turns to good +account in the important business he has set himself, of melting +Lavengro’s frost and being admitted a member of the +Open-Air Club. “Ah!” says the wily-student, +“I know the Eastern Counties; no nightingales like those, +especially Norfolk nightingales.” Borrow’s face +begins to brighten slightly, but still he does not direct his +attention to the stranger, who proceeds to remark that although +the southern counties are so much warmer than Norfolk, some of +them, such as Cornwall and Devon, are without nightingales. +Borrow’s face begins to get brighter still, and he looks +out of the window with a smile, as though he were being suddenly +carried back to the green lanes of his beloved Norfolk.</p> +<p>“From which well-known fact of ornithology,” +continues the student, “I am driven to infer that in their +choice of habitat nightingales are guided not so much by +considerations of latitude as of good taste.” +Borrow’s anger is evidently melting away. The talk +runs still upon nightingales, and the student mentions the +attempt to settle them in Scotland once made by Sir John +Sinclair, who introduced nightingales’ eggs from England +into robins’ nests in Scotland, in the hope that the young +nightingales, after enjoying a Scotch summer, would return to the +place of their birth, after <!-- page 36--><a +name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>the custom of +English nightingales. “And did they return?” +says Borrow, with as much interest as if the honour of his +country were involved in the question. “Return to +Scotland?” says the student quietly; “the entire +animal kingdom are agreed, you know, in never returning to +Scotland. Besides, the nightingales’ eggs in question +were laid in Norfolk.” Conquered at last, Borrow +extends the hand of brotherhood to the impudent student (whose +own private opinion, no doubt, is that Norfolk is more successful +in producing Nelsons than nightingales), and proceeds without +more ado to tell how “poor Jerry Abershaw,” on being +captured by the Bow Street runners, had left his good sword +behind him as a memento of highway glories soon to be ended on +the gallows tree. (By-the-bye, I wonder where that sword is +now; it was bought by Mr. Adolphus Levy, of Alton Lodge, at the +closing of the Bald-Faced Stag.)</p> +<p>From Jerry Abershaw Borrow gets upon other equally interesting +topics, such as the decadence of beer and pugilism, and the +nobility of the now neglected British bruiser, as exampled +especially in the case of the noble Pearce, who lost his life +through rushing up a staircase and rescuing a woman from a +burning house after having on a previous occasion rescued another +woman by blacking the eyes of six gamekeepers, who had been set +upon her by some noble lord <!-- page 37--><a +name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>or +another. Then, while the ale sparkles with a richer colour +as the evening lights grow deeper, the talk gets naturally upon +“lords” in general, gentility nonsense, and +“hoity-toityism” as the canker at the heart of modern +civilization.</p> +<h3><!-- page 38--><a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +38</span>II.</h3> +<p>Borrow could look at Nature without thinking of +himself—a rare gift, for Nature, as I have said, has been +disappointed in man. Her great desire from the first has +been to grow an organism so conscious that it can turn round and +look at her with intelligent eyes. She has done so at last, +but the consciousness is so high as to be self-conscious, and man +cannot for egotism look at his mother after all. Borrow was +a great exception. Thoreau’s self-consciousness +showed itself in presence of Nature, Borrow’s in presence +of man. The very basis of Borrow’s nature was +reverence. His unswerving belief in the beneficence of God +was most beautiful, most touching. In his life Borrow had +suffered much: a temperament such as his must needs suffer +much—so shy it was, so proud, and yet yearning for a close +sympathy such as no creature and only solitary communing with +Nature can give. Under any circumstances, I say, Borrow +would have known how sharp and cruel are the flints along the +road—how tender are a poet’s feet; but <i>his</i> +road at one time was rough indeed; not when he was with his gipsy +friends (for a tent is freer than a roof, according to the +grammarian of Codling Gap, and roast hedgehog is the daintiest of +viands), but when he was toiling in London, his fine gifts +unrecognized <!-- page 39--><a name="page39"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 39</span>and useless—<i>that</i> was +when Borrow passed through the fire. Yet every sorrow and +every disaster of his life he traced to the kindly hand of a +benevolent and wise Father, who sometimes will use a whip of +scorpions, but only to chastise into a right and happy course the +children he loves.</p> +<p>Apart from the instinctive rectitude of his nature, it was +with Borrow a deep-rooted conviction that sin never goes, and +never can go, unpunished. His doctrine, indeed, was +something like the Buddhist doctrine of Karma—it was based +on an instinctive apprehension of the sacredness of +“law” in the most universal acceptation of that +word. Sylvester Boswell’s definition of a free man, +in that fine, self-respective certificate of his, as one who is +“free from all cares or fears of law that may come against +him,” is, indeed, the gospel of every true +nature-worshipper. The moment Thoreau spurned the legal +tax-gatherer the law locked the nature-worshipper in gaol. +To enjoy nature the soul <i>must</i> be free—free not only +from tax-gatherers, but from sin; for every wrongful act awakes, +out of the mysterious bosom of Nature herself, its own peculiar +serpent, having its own peculiar stare, but always hungry and +bloody-fanged, which follows the delinquent’s feet +whithersoever they go, gliding through the dewy grass on the +brightest morning, dodging round the trees on the calmest eve, +wriggling <!-- page 40--><a name="page40"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 40</span>across the brook where the wrongdoer +would fain linger on the stepping-stones to soothe his soul with +the sight of the happy minnows shooting between the +water-weeds—following him everywhere, in short, till at +last, in sheer desperation, he must needs stop and turn, and bare +his breast to the fangs; when, having yielded up to the thing its +fill of atoning blood, Nature breaks into her old smile again, +and he goes on his way in peace.</p> +<p>All this Borrow understood better than any man I have ever +met. Yet even into his doctrine of Providence Borrow +imported such an element of whim that it was impossible to listen +to him sometimes without a smile. For instance, having +arrived at the conclusion that a certain lieutenant had been +cruelly ill used by genteel magnates high in office, Borrow +discovered that since that iniquity Providence had frowned on the +British arms, and went on to trace the disastrous blunder of +Balaklava to this cause. Again, having decided that Sir +Walter Scott’s worship of gentility and Jacobitism had been +the main cause of the revival of flunkeyism and Popery in +England, Borrow saw in the dreadful monetary disasters which +overclouded Scott’s last days the hand of God, whose plan +was to deprive him of the worldly position Scott worshipped at +the very moment when his literary fame (which he misprized) was +dazzling the world.</p> +<p><!-- page 41--><a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +41</span>And now as to the gipsy wanderings. As I have +said, no man has been more entirely misunderstood than +Borrow. That a man who certainly did (as F. H. Groome says) +look like a “colossal clergyman” should have joined +the gipsies, that he should have wandered over England and +Europe, content often to have the grass for his bed and the sky +for his hostry-roof, has astonished very much (and I believe +scandalized very much) this age. My explanation of the +matter is this: Among the myriads of children born into a world +of brick and mortar there appears now and then one who is meant +for better things—one who exhibits unmistakable signs that +he inherits the blood of those remote children of the open air +who, according to the old Sabæan notion, on the plains of +Asia lived with Nature, loved Nature and were loved by her, and +from whom all men are descended. George Borrow was one of +those who show the olden strain. Now, for such a man, born +in a country like England, where the modern fanaticism of +house-worship has reached a condition which can only be called +maniacal, what is there left but to try for a time the +gipsy’s tent? On the Continent house-worship is +strong enough in all conscience; but in France, in Spain, in +Italy, even in Germany, people do think of something beyond the +house. But here, where there are no romantic crimes, to get +a genteel house, to keep (or “run”) a <!-- page +42--><a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +42</span>genteel house, or to pretend to keep (or +“run”) a genteel house, is the great first cause of +almost every British delinquency, from envy and malignant slander +up to forgery, robbery, and murder. And yet it is a fact, +as Borrow discovered (when a mere lad in a solicitor’s +office), that to men in health the house need not, and should +not, be the all-absorbing consideration, but should be quite +secondary to considerations of honesty and sweet air, pure water, +clean linen, good manners, freedom to migrate at will, and, above +all, freedom from “all cares or fears of law” that +may come against a man in the shape of debts, duns, and +tax-gatherers.</p> +<p>Against this folly of softening our bodies by +“snugness” and degrading our souls by +“flunkeyism,” Borrow’s early life was a +protest. He saw that if it were really unwholesome for man +to be shone upon by the sun, blown upon by the winds, and rained +upon by the rain, like all the other animals, man would never +have existed at all, for sun and wind and rain have produced him +and everything that lives. He saw that for the cultivation +of health, honesty, and good behaviour every man born in the +temperate zone ought, unless King Circumstance says +“No,” to spend in the open air eight or nine hours at +least out of the twenty-four, and ought to court rather than to +shun Nature’s sweet shower-bath the rain, unless, of +course, his chest is weak.</p> +<p><!-- page 43--><a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +43</span>The evanescence of literary fame is strikingly +illustrated by recalling at this moment my first sight of +Borrow. I could not have been much more than a boy, for I +and a friend had gone down to Yarmouth in March to enjoy the +luxury of bathing in a Yarmouth sea, and it is certainly a +“good while”—to use Borrow’s +phrase—since I considered <i>that</i> a luxury suitable to +March. On the morning after our arrival, having walked some +distance out of Yarmouth, we threw down our clothes and towels +upon the sand some few yards from another heap of clothes, which +indicated, to our surprise, that we were not, after all, the only +people in Yarmouth who could bathe in a biting wind; and soon we +perceived, ducking in an immense billow that came curving and +curling towards the shore, such a pair of shoulders as I had not +seen for a long time, crowned by a head white and glistening as +burnished silver. (Borrow’s hair was white I believe, +when he was quite a young man.) When the wave had broken +upon the sand, there was the bather wallowing on the top of the +water like a Polar bear disporting in an Arctic sun. In +swimming Borrow clawed the water like a dog. I had plunged +into the surf and got very close to the swimmer, whom I perceived +to be a man of almost gigantic proportions, when suddenly an +instinct told me that it was Lavengro himself, who lived +thereabouts, and the feeling that it was he so entirely <!-- page +44--><a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +44</span>stopped the action of my heart that I sank for a moment +like a stone, soon to rise again, however, in glow of pleasure +and excitement: so august a presence was Lavengro’s +then!</p> +<p>I ought to say, however, that Borrow was at that time my +hero. From my childhood I had taken the deepest interest in +proscribed races such as the Cagots, but especially in the +persecuted children of Roma. I had read accounts of whole +families being executed in past times for no other crime than +that of their being born gipsies, and tears, childish and yet +bitter, had I shed over their woes. Now Borrow was the +recognized champion of the gipsies—the friend companion, +indeed, of the proscribed and persecuted races of the +world. Nor was this all: I saw in him more of the true +Nature instinct than in any other writer—or so, at least, I +imagined. To walk out from a snug house at Rydal Mount for +the purpose of making poetical sketches for publication seemed to +me a very different thing from having no home but a tent in a +dingle, or rather from Borrow’s fashion of making all +Nature your home. Although I would have given worlds to go +up and speak to him as he was tossing his clothes upon his back, +I could not do it. Morning after morning did I see him +undress, wallow in the sea, come out again, give me a somewhat +sour look, dress, and then stride away inland at a tremendous +pace, but never could I speak to <!-- page 45--><a +name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span>him; and many +years passed before I saw him again. He was then half +forgotten.</p> +<p>For an introduction to him at last I was indebted to Dr. +Gordon Hake, the poet, who had known Borrow for many years, and +whose friendship Borrow cherished above most things—as was +usual, indeed, with the friends of Dr. Hake. This was done +with some difficulty, for, in calling at Roehampton for a walk +through Richmond Park and about the Common, Borrow’s first +question was always, “Are you alone?” and no +persuasion could induce him to stay unless it could be +satisfactorily shown that he would not be “pestered by +strangers.” On a certain morning, however, he called, +and suddenly coming upon me, there was no retreating, and we were +introduced. He tried to be as civil as possible, but +evidently he was much annoyed. Yet there was something in +the very tone of his voice that drew my heart to him, for to me +he was the Lavengro of my boyhood still. My own shyness had +been long before fingered off by the rough handling of the world, +but his retained all the bloom of youth, and a terrible barrier +it was, yet I attacked it manfully. I knew that Borrow had +read but little except in his own out-of-the-way directions; but +then unfortunately, like all specialists, he considered that in +these his own special directions lay all the knowledge that was +of any value. Accordingly, what appeared to Borrow <!-- +page 46--><a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +46</span>as the most striking characteristic of the present age +was its ignorance.</p> +<p>Unfortunately, too, I knew that for strangers to talk of his +own published books or of gipsies appeared to him to be +“prying,” though there I should have been quite at +home. I knew, however, that in the obscure English pamphlet +literature of the last century, recording the sayings and doings +of eccentric people and strange adventurers, Borrow was very +learned, and I too chanced to be far from ignorant in that +direction. I touched on Bamfylde Moore Carew, but without +effect. Borrow evidently considered that every properly +educated man was familiar with the story of Bamfylde Moore Carew +in its every detail. Then I touched upon beer, the British +bruiser, “gentility-nonsense,” the “trumpery +great”; then upon etymology, traced hoity-toityism to +<i>toit</i>, a roof,—but only to have my shallow philology +dismissed with a withering smile. I tried other subjects in +the same direction, but with small success, till in a lucky +moment I bethought myself of Ambrose Gwinett. There is a +very scarce eighteenth-century pamphlet narrating the story of +Ambrose Gwinett, the man who, after having been hanged and +gibbeted for murdering a traveller with whom he had shared a +double-bedded room at a seaside inn, revived in the night, +escaped from the gibbet irons, went to sea as a common sailor, +and afterwards met on a British man-of-war <!-- page 47--><a +name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>the very man +he had been hanged for murdering. The truth was that +Gwinett’s supposed victim, having been attacked on the +night in question by a violent bleeding at the nose, had risen +and left the house for a few minutes’ walk in the +sea-breeze, when the press-gang captured him and bore him off to +sea, where he had been in service ever since. The story is +true, and the pamphlet, Borrow afterwards told me (I know not on +what authority), was written by Goldsmith from Gwinett’s +dictation for a platter of cowheel.</p> +<p>To the bewilderment of Dr. Hake, I introduced the subject of +Ambrose Gwinett in the same manner as I might have introduced the +story of “Achilles’ wrath,” and appealed to Dr. +Hake (who, of course, had never heard of the book or the man) as +to whether a certain incident in the pamphlet had gained or lost +by the dramatist who, at one of the minor theatres, had many +years ago dramatized the story. Borrow was caught at +last. “What?” said he, “you know that +pamphlet about Ambrose Gwinett?” “Know +it?” said I, in a hurt tone, as though he had asked me if I +knew ‘Macbeth’; “of course I know Ambrose +Gwinett, Mr. Borrow, don’t you?” “And you +know the play?” said he. “Of course I do, Mr. +Borrow?” I said, in a tone that was now a little angry at +such an insinuation of crass ignorance. “Why,” +said he, “it’s years and <!-- page 48--><a +name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>years since +it was acted; I never was much of a theatre man, but I did go to +see <i>that</i>.” “Well, I should rather think +you <i>did</i>, Mr. Borrow,” said I. +“But,” said he, staring hard at me, +“<i>you</i>—you were not born!” +“And I was not born,” said I, “when the +‘Agamemnon’ was produced, and yet one reads the +‘Agamemnon,’ Mr. Borrow. I have read the drama +of ‘Ambrose Gwinett.’ I have it bound in +morocco with some more of Douglas Jerrold’s early +transpontine plays, and some Æschylean dramas by Mr. +Fitzball. I will lend it to you, Mr. Borrow, if you +like.” He was completely conquered. +“Hake!” he cried, in a loud voice, regardless of my +presence. “Hake! your friend knows +everything.” Then he murmured to himself, +“Wonderful man! Knows Ambrose Gwinett!”</p> +<p>It is such delightful reminiscences as these that will cause +me to have as long as I live a very warm place in my heart for +the memory of George Borrow.</p> +<p>From that time I used to see Borrow often at Roehampton, +sometimes at Putney, and sometimes, but not often, in +London. I could have seen much more of him than I did had +not the whirlpool of London, into which I plunged for a time, +borne me away from this most original of men; and this is what I +so greatly lament now: for of Borrow it may be said, as it was +said of a greater man still, that <!-- page 49--><a +name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>“after +Nature made <i>him</i> she forthwith broke the +mould.” The last time I ever saw him was shortly +before he left London to live in the country. It was, I +remember well, on Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze at +a sunset of singular and striking splendour, whose gorgeous +clouds and ruddy mists were reeling and boiling over the +West-End. Borrow came up and stood leaning over the +parapet, entranced by the sight, as well he might be. Like +most people born in flat districts, he had a passion for +sunsets. Turner could not have painted that one, I think, +and certainly my pen could not describe it; for the London smoke +was flushed by the sinking sun and had lost its dunness, and, +reddening every moment as it rose above the roofs, steeples, and +towers, it went curling round the sinking sun in a rosy vapour, +leaving, however, just a segment of a golden rim, which gleamed +as dazzlingly as in the thinnest and clearest air—a +peculiar effect which struck Borrow deeply. I never saw +such a sunset before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge; and +from its association with “the last of Borrow” I +shall never forget it.</p> +<h3><!-- page 50--><a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +50</span>III.</h3> +<p>Students of Borrow will be as much surprised as pleased to +find what a large collection of documents Dr. Knapp has been able +to use in compiling this long-expected biography. <a +name="citation50"></a><a href="#footnote50" +class="citation">[50]</a> Indeed, the collection might have +been larger and richer still. For instance, in the original +manuscript of ‘Zincali’ (in the possession of the +present writer) there are some variations from the printed text; +but, what is of very much more importance, the whole—or +nearly the whole—of Borrow’s letters to the Bible +Society, which Dr. Knapp believed to be lost, have been +discovered in the crypt of the Bible House in which the records +of the Society are stored. But even without these materials +two massive volumes crammed with documents throwing light upon +the life and career of a man like George Borrow must needs be +interesting to the student of English literature. For among +all the remarkable characters that during the middle of the +present century figured in the world of letters, the most +eccentric, the most whimsical, and in every way the most <!-- +page 51--><a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +51</span>extraordinary was surely the man whom Dr. Knapp calls, +appropriately enough, his “hero.”</p> +<p>It is no exaggeration to say that there was not a single point +in which Borrow resembled any other writing man of his time; +indeed, we cannot, at the moment, recall any really important +writer of any period whose eccentricity of character can be +compared with his. At the basis of the artistic temperament +is generally that “sweet reasonableness” the lack of +which we excuse in Borrow and in almost no one else. As to +literary whim, it must not be supposed that this quality is +necessarily and always the outcome of temperament. There +are some authors of whom it may be said that the moment they take +pen in hand they pass into their “literary mood,” a +mood that in their cases does not seem to be born of temperament, +but to spring from some fantastic movement of the +intellect. Sterne, for instance, the greatest of all +masters of whim (not excluding Rabelais), passed when in the act +of writing into a literary mood which, as “Yorick,” +he tried to live up to in his private life—tried in +vain. With regard to Charles Lamb, his temperament, no +doubt, was whimsical enough, and yet how many rich and rare +passages in his writings are informed by a whim of a purely +intellectual kind—a whim which could only have sprung from +that delicious literary mood of his, engendered by much <!-- page +52--><a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>study +of quaint old writers, into which he passed when at his +desk! But whatsoever is whimsical, whatsoever is eccentric +and angular, in Borrow’s writings is the natural, the +inevitable growth of a nature more whimsical, more eccentric, +more angular still.</p> +<p>That such a man should have had an extraordinary +life-experience was to be expected. And an extraordinary +life-experience Borrow’s was, to be sure! This alone +would lend an especial interest to Borrow’s +biography—the fact, we mean, of his life having been +extraordinary. For in these days no lives, as a rule, are +less adventurous, none, as a rule, less tinged with romance, than +the lives of those who attain eminence in the world of +letters. No doubt they nowadays move about from place to +place a good deal; not a few of them may even be called +travellers, or at least globe-trotters; but, alas! in +globe-trotting who shall hope to meet with adventures of a more +romantic kind than those connected with a railway collision or a +storm at sea? And this was so in days that preceded +ours. It was so with Scott, it was so with Dickens, it was +so with even Dumas, who, chained to his desk for months and +months at a stretch, could only be seen by his friends during the +intervals of work. Nay, even with regard to the writing men +of the far past, the more time a man gave to literary production +the less time he had to drink the rich wine of life, to see <!-- +page 53--><a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +53</span>the world, to study nature and nature’s enigma +man.</p> +<p>Perhaps one reason why we have almost no record of what the +greatest of all writing men was doing in the world is that while +his friends were elbowing the tide of life in the streets of +London, or fighting in the Low Countries, or carousing at the +Mermaid Tavern, or at the Apollo Saloon, he was filling every +moment with work—work which enabled him, before he reached +his fifty-second year, to build up that literary monument of his, +that edifice which made the monuments of the others, his +contemporaries, seem like the handiwork of pigmies. But as +regards Borrow, student though he was, it is not as an author +that we think of him; it is as the adventurer, it is as the great +Romany Rye, who discovered the most interesting people in Europe, +and as a brother vagabond lived with them—lived with them +“on the accont of health, sweetness of the air, and for +enjoying the pleasure of Nature’s life,” to quote the +“testimonial” of the prose-poet Sylvester +Boswell.</p> +<p>Even by his personal appearance Borrow was marked off from his +fellow-men. As a gipsy girl once remarked, “Nobody as +ever see’d the white-headed Romany Rye ever forgot +him.” Standing considerably above six feet in height, +he was built as perfectly as a Greek statue, and his practice of +athletic <!-- page 54--><a name="page54"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 54</span>exercises gave his every movement the +easy elasticity of an athlete under training. As to his +countenance, “noble” is the only word that can be +used to describe it. The silvery whiteness of the thick +crop of hair seemed to add in a remarkable way to the beauty of +the hairless face, but also it gave a strangeness to it, and this +strangeness was intensified by a certain incongruity between the +features (perfect Roman-Greek in type) and the Scandinavian +complexion, luminous and sometimes rosy as an English +girl’s. An increased intensity was lent by the fair +skin to the dark lustre of the eyes. What struck the +observer, therefore, was not the beauty but the strangeness of +the man’s appearance. It was not this feature or that +which struck the eye, it was the expression of the face as a +whole. If it were possible to describe this expression in a +word or two, it might, perhaps, be called a shy +self-consciousness.</p> +<p>How did it come about, then, that a man shy, self-conscious, +and sensitive to the last degree, became the Ulysses of the +writing fraternity, wandering among strangers all over Europe, +and consorting on intimate terms with that race who, more than +all others, are repelled by shy self-consciousness—the +gipsies? This, perhaps, is how the puzzle may be +explained. When Borrow was talking to people in his own +class of life there was always in his bearing a kind <!-- page +55--><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>of +shy, defiant egotism. What Carlyle calls the “armed +neutrality” of social intercourse oppressed him. He +felt himself to be in the enemy’s camp. In his eyes +there was always a kind of watchfulness, as if he were taking +stock of his interlocutor and weighing him against himself. +He seemed to be observing what effect his words were having, and +this attitude repelled people at first. But the moment he +approached a gipsy on the heath, or a poor Jew in Houndsditch, or +a homeless wanderer by the wayside, he became another man. +He threw off the burden of restraint. The feeling of the +“armed neutrality” was left behind, and he seemed to +be at last enjoying the only social intercourse that could give +him pleasure. This it was that enabled him to make friends +so entirely with the gipsies. Notwithstanding what is +called “Romany guile” (which is the growth of ages of +oppression), the basis of the Romany character is a joyous +frankness. Once let the isolating wall which shuts off the +Romany from the “Gorgio” be broken through, and the +communicativeness of the Romany temperament begins to show +itself. The gipsies are extremely close observers; they +were very quick to notice how different was Borrow’s +bearing towards themselves from his bearing towards people of his +own race, and Borrow used to say that “old Mrs. Herne and +Leonora were <!-- page 56--><a name="page56"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 56</span>the only gipsies who suspected and +disliked him.”</p> +<p>Thus it came about that the gipsies and the wanderers +generally were almost the only people in any country who saw the +winsome side of Borrow. A truly winsome side he had. +Yes, notwithstanding all that has been said about him to the +contrary, Borrow was a most interesting and charming +companion. We all have our angularities; we all have +unpleasant facets of character when occasion offers for showing +them. But there are some unfortunate people whose +angularities are for ever chafing and irritating their +friends. Borrow was one of these. It is very rarely +indeed that one meets a friend or an acquaintance of +Borrow’s who speaks of him with the kindness he +deserved. When a friend or an acquaintance relates an +anecdote of him the asperity with which he does so is really +remarkable and quite painful. It was—it must have +been—far from Dr. Gordon Hake’s wish to speak +unkindly of his old friend who remained to the last deeply +attached to him. And yet few things have done more to +prejudice the public against Borrow than the Doctor’s tale +of Lavengro’s outrage at Rougham Rookery, the residence of +the banker Bevan, one of the kindest and most benevolent men in +Suffolk.</p> +<p>This story, often told by Hake, appeared at last in print in +his memoirs. Invited to dinner <!-- page 57--><a +name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>by Mr. Bevan, +Borrow accepted the invitation and, according to the anecdote, +thus behaved: During dinner Mrs. Bevan, thinking to please him, +said, “Oh, Mr. Borrow, I have read your books with so much +pleasure!” On which Borrow exclaimed, “Pray +what books do you mean, ma’am—do you mean my account +books?” Then, rising from the table, he walked up and +down among the servants during the whole dinner, and afterwards +wandered about the rooms and passages till the carriage could be +ordered for his return home. A monstrous proceeding truly, +and not to be condoned by any circumstances. Yet some part +of its violence may, perhaps, thus be explained. +Borrow’s loyalty to a friend was proverbial—until he +and the friend quarrelled. A man who dared say an +ungenerous word against a friend of Borrow’s ran the risk +of being knocked down. Borrow on this occasion had been +driven half mad with rage—unreasoning, ignorant +rage—against the Bury banking-house, because it had +“struck the docket” against a friend of +Borrow’s, the heir to a considerable estate, who had got +into difficulties. What Borrow yearned to do was, as he +told the present writer, to cane the banker. He had, as far +as his own reputation went, far better have done this and taken +the consequences than have insulted the banker’s +wife—one of the most gentle, amiable, and unassuming ladies +in <!-- page 58--><a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +58</span>Suffolk. Dr. Knapp speaks very sharply of Miss +Cobb’s remarks upon Borrow, and certainly these remarks are +made with a great deal too much acidity. But if the +Borrovian is to lose temper with every one who girds at Borrow he +will lead a not very comfortable life.</p> +<p>Dr. Knapp has no doubt whatever that ‘Lavengro’ is +in the main an autobiography. We have none. The only +question is how much <i>Dichtung</i> is mingled with the +<i>Wahrheit</i>. Had it not been for the amazingly clumsy +pieces of fiction which he threw into the narrative—such +incidents as that of his meeting on the road the sailor son of +the old apple-woman of London Bridge, and the exaggerated +description of the man sent to sleep by reading +Wordsworth—few readers would have doubted the +autobiographical nature of ‘Lavengro’ and ‘The +Romany Rye.’ Such incidents as these shed an air of +unreality over the whole.</p> +<p>All writers upon Borrow fall into the mistake of considering +him to have been an East Anglian. They might as well call +Charlotte Brontë a Yorkshirewoman as call Borrow an East +Anglian. He was, of course, no more an East Anglian than an +Irishman born in London is an Englishman. He had at bottom +no East Anglian characteristics. He inherited nothing from +Norfolk save his accent and his love of “leg of mutton and +turnips.” Yet he is a striking illustration of the +way in which the locality <!-- page 59--><a +name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>that has +given birth to a man influences him throughout his life. +The fact of Borrow’s having been born in East Anglia was +the result of accident. His father, a Cornishman of a good +middle-class family, had been obliged, owing to a youthful +escapade, to leave his native place and enlist as a common +soldier. Afterwards he became a recruiting officer, and +moved about from one part of Great Britain and Ireland to +another. It so chanced that while staying at East Dereham, +in Norfolk, he met and fell in love with a lady of French +extraction. Not one drop of East Anglian blood was in the +veins of Borrow’s father, and very little in the veins of +his mother. Borrow’s ancestry was pure Cornish on one +side, and on the other mainly French. But such was the +sublime egotism of Borrow—perhaps we should have said such +is the sublime egotism of human nature—that the fact of his +having been born in East Anglia made him look upon that part of +the world as the very hub of the universe.</p> +<p>There is, it must be confessed, something to us very agreeable +in Dr. Knapp’s single-minded hero-worship. A scholar +and a philologist himself, he seems to have devoted a large +portion of his life to the study of Borrow—following in +Lavengro’s footsteps from one country to another with +unflagging enthusiasm. Now and again, undoubtedly, this +hero-worship runs to excess: the faults of style and of method in +<!-- page 60--><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +60</span>Borrow’s writings are condoned or are passed by +unobserved by Dr. Knapp, while the most unanswerable strictures +upon them by others are resented. For instance, at the end +of the following extract from the report of the gentleman who +read ‘Zincali’ for Mr. Murray, he appends a note of +exclamation, as though he considers the admirable advice given to +be eccentric or bad:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The Dialogues are amongst the best parts of +the book; but in several of them the tone of the speakers, of +those especially who are in humble life, is too correct and +elevated, and therefore out of character. This takes away +from their effect. I think it would be very advisable that +Mr. Borrow should go over them with reference to this point, +simplifying a few of the terms of expression and introducing a +few contractions—<i>don’ts</i>, <i>can’ts</i>, +&c. This would improve them greatly.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Now the truth is that Mr. Murray’s reader, whoever he +was, <a name="citation60"></a><a href="#footnote60" +class="citation">[60]</a> pointed out the one great blemish in +<i>all</i> Borrow’s dramatic pictures of gipsy life, +wheresoever the scene may be laid. Take his pictures of +English gipsies. The reader has only to compare the +dialogue between gipsies given in that photographic study of +Romany life ‘In Gipsy Tents’ with the dialogues in +‘Lavengro’ to see how the <!-- page 61--><a +name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>illusion in +Borrow’s narrative is disturbed by the uncolloquial +vocabulary of the speakers. After all allowance is made for +the Romany’s love of high-sounding words, it considerably +weakens our belief in Mr. and Mrs. Petulengro, Ursula, and the +rest, to find them using complex sentences and bookish words +which, even among English people, are rarely heard in +conversation.</p> +<p>Dr. Knapp says emphatically that Borrow never created a +character, and that the originals are easily recognizable to one +who thoroughly knows the times and Borrow’s writings. +This is true, no doubt, as regards people with whom he was +brought into contact at Norwich, and, indeed, generally before +the period of his gipsy wanderings. It must not be +supposed, however, that such characters as the man who +“touched” to avert the evil chance and the man who +taught himself Chinese are in any sense portraits. They +have so many of Borrow’s own peculiarities that they might +rather be called portraits of himself. There was nothing +that Borrow strove against with more energy than the curious +impulse, which he seems to have shared with Dr. Johnson, to touch +the objects along his path in order to save himself from the evil +chance. He never conquered the superstition. In +walking through Richmond Park he would step out of his way +constantly to touch a tree, and he was offended if the <!-- page +62--><a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +62</span>friend he was with seemed to observe it. Many of +the peculiarities of the man who taught himself Chinese were also +Borrow’s own.</p> +<p>“But what about Isopel Berners?” the reader will +ask. “How much of truth and how much of fiction went +to the presentation of this most interesting +character?” Seeing that Dr. Knapp has at his command +such an immense amount of material in manuscript, the reader will +feel some disappointment at discovering that the book tells us +nothing new about her. The character he names Isopel +Berners was just the sort of girl in every way to attract Borrow, +and if he had had the feeblest spark of the love-passion in his +constitution one could almost imagine his falling in love with +her. Yet even the portrait of Isopel is marred by +Borrow’s impulse towards exaggeration. He must needs +describe her as being taller than himself, and as he certainly +stood six feet three Isopel would have been far better suited to +sit by the side of Borrow’s friend the “Norfolk +giant,” Hales, in the little London public-house where he +latterly resided, than to become famous as a fighting woman who +could conquer the Flaming Tinman. Few indeed have been the +women who could stand up for long before a trained boxer, and +these must needs be not too tall, and moreover they must have +their breasts padded after the manner of a well-known gipsy girl +who excelled in this once <!-- page 63--><a +name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>fashionable +accomplishment. Even then a woman’s instinct impels +her to guard her chest more carefully than she guards her face, +and this leads to disaster. Altogether Borrow, by his +wilful exaggeration, makes the reader a little sceptical about +Isopel, who was really an East Anglian road-girl of the finest +type, known to the Boswells, and remembered not many years +ago. All that Dr. Knapp has derived from the documents in +his possession concerning her is the following extraordinary +passage from the original manuscript, which Borrow struck out of +‘Lavengro.’ He says:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“As to the remarkable character introduced +into ‘Lavengro’ and ‘Romany Rye’ under +the name of Isopel Berners, I have no light from the MSS. of +George Borrow, save the following fragment, which perhaps I ought +to have suppressed. I am sorry if it dispel any +illusions:—</p> +<p>“(<i>Loquitur Petulengro</i>) ‘My mind at present +rather inclines towards two wives. I have heard that King +Pharaoh had two, if not more. Now, I think myself as good a +man as he; and if he had more wives than one, why should not I, +whose name is Petulengro?’</p> +<p>“‘But what would Mrs. Petulengro say?’</p> +<p>“‘Why, to tell you the truth, brother, it was she +who first put the thought into my mind. She has always, you +know, had strange notions in her head, gorgiko notions, I suppose +we may call them, about gentility and the like, and reading and +writing. Now, though she can <!-- page 64--><a +name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>neither read +nor write herself, she thinks that she is lost among our people +and that they are no society for her. So says she to me one +day, “Pharaoh,” says she, “I wish you would +take another wife, that I might have a little pleasant +company. As for these here, I am their +betters.” “I have no objection,” said I; +“who shall it be? Shall it be a Cooper or a +Stanley?” “A Cooper or a Stanley!” said +she, with a toss of her head, “I might as well keep my +present company as theirs; none of your rubbish; let it be a +<i>gorgie</i>, one that I can speak an idea +with”—that was her word, I think. Now I am +thinking that this here Bess of yours would be just the kind of +person both for my wife and myself. My wife wants something +gorgiko, something genteel. Now Bess is of blood gorgious; +if you doubt it, look in her face, all full of <i>pawno +ratter</i>, white blood, brother; and as for gentility, nobody +can make exceptions to Bess’s gentility, seeing she was +born in the workhouse of Melford the Short, where she learned to +read and write. She is no Irish woman, brother, but English +pure, and her father was a farmer.</p> +<p>“‘So much as far as my wife is concerned. As +for myself, I tell you what, brother, I want a strapper; one who +can give and take. The Flying Tinker is abroad, vowing +vengeance against us all. I know what the Flying Tinker is, +so does Tawno. The Flying Tinker came to our camp. +“Damn you all,” says he, “I’ll fight the +best of you for nothing.”—“Done!” says +Tawno, “I’ll be ready for you in a +minute.” So Tawno went into his tent and came out +<!-- page 65--><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +65</span>naked. “Here’s at you,” says +Tawno. Brother, Tawno fought for two hours with the Flying +Tinker, for two whole hours, and it’s hard to say which had +the best of it or the worst. I tell you what, brother, I +think Tawno had the worst of it. Night came on. Tawno +went into his tent to dress himself and the Flying Tinker went +his way.</p> +<p>“‘Now suppose, brother, the Flying Tinker comes +upon us when Tawno is away. Who is to fight the Flying +Tinker when he says: “D---n you, I will fight the best of +you”? Brother, I will fight the Flying Tinker for +five pounds; but I couldn’t for less. The Flying +Tinker is a big man, and though he hasn’t my science, he +weighs five stone heavier. It wouldn’t do for me to +fight a man like that for nothing. But there’s Bess, +who can afford to fight the Flying Tinker at any time for what +he’s got, and that’s three ha’pence. She +can beat him, brother; I bet five pounds that Bess can beat the +Flying Tinker. Now, if I marry Bess, I’m quite easy +on his score. He comes to our camp and says his say. +“I won’t dirty my hands with you,” says I, +“at least not under five pounds; but here’s Bess +who’ll fight you for nothing.” I tell you what, +brother, when he knows that Bess is Mrs. Pharaoh, he’ll +fight shy of our camp; he won’t come near it, +brother. He knows Bess don’t like him, and +what’s more, that she can lick him. He’ll let +us alone; at least I think so. If he does come, I’ll +smoke my pipe whilst Bess is beating the Flying Tinker. +Brother, I’m dry, and will now take a cup of +ale.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 66--><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +66</span>Why did Borrow reject this passage? Was it owing +to his dread of respectability’s frowns?—or was it +not rather because he felt that here his exaggeration, his +departure from the true in quest of the striking, did not +recommend itself to his cooler judgment? For those who know +anything of the gipsies would say at once that it would have been +impossible for Mrs. Petulengro to make this suggestion; and that, +even if she had made it, Mr. Petulengro would not have dared to +broach it to any English road-girl, least of all to a girl like +Isopel Berners. The passage, however, is the most +interesting document that Dr. Knapp has published.</p> +<p>What may be called the Isopel Berners chapter of +Borrow’s life was soon to be followed by the “veiled +period”—that is to say, the period between the point +where ends ‘The Romany Rye’ and the point where the +Bible Society engages Borrow.</p> +<p>Dr. Knapp’s mind seems a good deal exercised concerning +this period. Borrow having chosen to draw the veil over +that period, no one has any right to raise it—or, rather, +perhaps no one would have had any right to do so had not Borrow +himself thrown such a needless mystery around it. In +considering any matter in connexion with Borrow it is always +necessary to take into account the secretiveness of his +disposition, and also his passion for posing. He had a +child’s fondness for the wonderful. It <!-- page +67--><a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>is +through his own love of mystification that students like Dr. +Knapp must needs pry into these matters—must needs ask why +Borrow drew the veil over seven years—must needs ask +whether during the “veiled period” he led a life of +squalid misery, compared with which his sojourn with Isopel +Berners in Mumpers’ Dingle was luxury, or whether he was +really travelling, as he pretended to have been, over the +world.</p> +<p>By yielding to his instinct as a born showman he excites a +curiosity which would otherwise be unjustifiable. Even if +Dr. Knapp had been able to approach Borrow’s +stepdaughter—which he seems not to have been able to +do—it is pretty certain that she could have told him +nothing of that mysterious seven years. For about this +subject the people to whom Borrow seems to have been most +reticent were his wife and her daughter. Indeed, it was not +until after his wife’s death that he would allude to this +period even to his most intimate friends. One of the very +few people to whom he did latterly talk with anything like +frankness about this period in his life—Dr. Gordon +Hake—is dead; and perhaps there is not more than about one +other person now living who had anything of his confidence.</p> +<p>With regard to this veiled period, people who read the idyllic +pictures in ‘Lavengro’ and ‘The Romany +Rye’ of the life of a gipsy gentleman working as a +hedge-smith in the <!-- page 68--><a name="page68"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 68</span>dingle or by the roadside seem to +forget that Borrow was then working not for amusement, but for +bread, and they forget how scant the bread must have been that +could be bought for the odd sixpence or the few coppers that he +was able to earn. To those, however, who do not forget this +it needs no revelation from documents, and none from any +surviving friend, to come to the conclusion that as Borrow was +mainly living in England during these seven years (continuing for +a considerable time his life of a wanderer, and afterwards living +as an obscure literary struggler in Norwich), his life was during +this period one of privation, disappointment, and gloom. It +was for him to decide what he would give to the public and what +he would withhold.</p> +<p>The concluding chapter of Dr. Knapp’s book is not only +pathetic—it is painful. In the summer of 1874 Borrow +left London, bade adieu to Mr. Murray and a few friends, and +returned to Oulton—to die. On the 26th of July, 1881, +he was found dead in his home at Oulton, in his seventy-ninth +year.</p> +<h2><!-- page 69--><a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +69</span>II. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI,<br /> +1828–1882.</h2> +<h3>I.</h3> +<p>At Birchington-on-Sea one of the most rarely gifted men of our +time has just died [April 9th, 1882] after a lingering +illness. During the time that his ‘Ballads and +Sonnets’ was passing through the press last autumn his +health began to give way, and he left London for +Cumberland. A stay of a few weeks in the Vale of St. John, +however, did nothing to improve his health, and he returned much +shattered. After a time a numbness in the left arm excited +fear of paralysis, and he became dangerously ill. It is +probable, indeed, that nothing but the skill and unwearied +attention of Mr. John Marshall saved his life then, as it had +done upon several previous occasions. Such of his friends +as were then in London—W. B. Scott, Burne Jones, Leyland, +F. Shields, Mr. Dunn, and others—feeling the greatest +alarm, showed him every affectionate attention, and spared no +effort to preserve a life so precious and so beloved. Mr. +Seddon having placed at his disposal West Cliff Bungalow, +Birchington-on-Sea, <!-- page 70--><a name="page70"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 70</span>he went thither, accompanied by his +mother and sister and Mr. Hall Caine, about nine weeks since, but +received no benefit from the change, and, gradually sinking from +a complication of disorders, he died on Sunday last at 10 <span +class="smcap">p.m.</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p70b.jpg"> +<img alt="Dante Gabriel Rosette. From a crayon-drawing by +himself reproduced by the kind permission of Mrs. W. M. Rossetti" +src="images/p70s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Were I even competent to enter upon the discussion of +Rossetti’s gifts as a poet and as a painter, it would not +be possible to do so here and at this moment. That the +quality of romantic imagination informs with more vitality his +work than it can be said to inform the work of any of his +contemporaries was recognized at first by the few, and is now +(judging from the great popularity of his last volume of poetry) +being recognized by the many. And the same, I think, may be +said of his painting. Those who had the privilege of a +personal acquaintance with him knew how “of imagination all +compact” he was. Imagination, indeed, was at once his +blessing and his bane. To see too vividly—to love too +intensely—to suffer and enjoy too acutely—is the +doom, no doubt, of all those “lost wanderers from +Arden” who, according to the Rosicrucian story, sing the +world’s songs; and to Rossetti this applies more, perhaps, +than to most poets. And when we consider that the one +quality in all poetry which really gives it an endurance +outlasting the generation of its birth is neither music nor +colour, nor even intellectual substance, but the <!-- page +71--><a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +71</span>clearness of the seeing; the living breath of +imagination—the very qualities, in short, for which such +poems as ‘Sister Helen’ and ‘Rose Mary’ +are so conspicuous—we are driven to the conclusion that +Rossetti’s poetry has a long and enduring future before +it.</p> +<p>A life more devoted to literature and art than his it is +impossible to imagine. Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti was +born at 38, Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London, on the 12th +of May, 1828. He was the first son and second child of +Gabriele Rossetti, the patriotic poet, who, born at Vasto in the +Abruzzi, settled in Naples, and took an active part in extorting +from the Neapolitan king Ferdinand I. the constitution granted in +1820, which constitution being traitorously cancelled by the king +in 1821, Rossetti had to escape for his life to Malta with +various other persecuted constitutionalists. From Malta +Gabriele Rossetti went to England about 1823, where he married in +1826 Frances Polidori, daughter of Alfieri’s secretary and +sister of Byron’s Dr. Polidori. He became Professor +of Italian in King’s College, London, became also prominent +as a commentator on Dante, and died in April, 1854. His +children, four in number—Maria Francesca, Dante Gabriel, +William Michael, and Christina Georgina—all turned to +literature or to art, or to both, and all became famous. +There can, indeed, be no doubt that the Rossetti <!-- page +72--><a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +72</span>family will hold a position quite unique in the literary +and artistic annals of our time.</p> +<p>Young Rossetti was first sent to the private school of the +Rev. Mr. Paul in Foley Street, Portland Place, where he remained, +however, for only three quarters of a year, from the autumn of +1835 to the summer of 1836. He next went to King’s +College School in the autumn of 1836, where he remained till the +summer of 1843, having reached the fourth class, then conducted +by the Rev. Mr. Framley.</p> +<p>Having from early childhood shown a strong propensity for +drawing and painting, which had thus been always regarded as his +future profession, he now left school for ever and received no +more school learning. In Latin he was already fairly +proficient for his age; French he knew well; he had spoken +Italian from childhood, and had some German lessons about +1844–5. On leaving school he went at once to the Art +Academy of Cary (previously called Sass’s) near Bedford +Square, and thence obtained admission to the Royal Academy +Antique School in 1844 or 1845. To the Royal Academy Life +School he never went, and he was a somewhat negligent art +student, but always regarded as one who had a future before +him.</p> +<p>In 1849 Rossetti exhibited ‘The Girlhood of the +Virgin’ in the so-called Free Exhibition or Portland +Gallery. The artist who had perhaps the strongest influence +upon Rossetti’s <!-- page 73--><a name="page73"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 73</span>early tastes was Ford Madox Brown, +who, however, refused from the first to join the Pre-Raphaelite +Brotherhood on the ground that coteries had in modern art no +proper function. Rossetti was deeply impressed with the +power and designing faculty displayed by Madox Brown’s +cartoons exhibited in Westminster Hall. When Rossetti began +serious work as a painter he thought of Madox Brown as the one +man from whom he would willingly receive practical guidance, and +wrote to him at random. From this time Madox Brown became +his intimate friend and artistic monitor.</p> +<p>In painting, however, Rossetti was during this time exercising +only half his genius. From his childhood it became evident +that he was a poet. At the age of five he wrote a sort of +play called ‘The Slave,’ which, as may be imagined, +showed no noteworthy characteristic save precocity. This +was followed by the poem called ‘Sir Hugh Heron,’ +which was written about 1844, and some translations of German +poetry. ‘The Blessed Damozel’ and ‘Sister +Helen’ were produced in their original form so early as +1846 or 1847. The latter of these has undergone more +modifications than any other first-class poem of our time. +To take even the new edition of the ‘Poems’ which +appeared last year [1881], the stanzas introducing the wife of +the luckless hero appealing to the sorceress for mercy are so +important in the <!-- page 74--><a name="page74"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 74</span>glamour they shed back over the +stanzas that have gone before, that their introduction may almost +be characterized as a rewriting of every previous line.</p> +<p>The translations from the early Italian poets also began as +far back as 1845 or 1846, and may have been mainly completed by +1849. Rossetti’s gifts as a translator were, no +doubt, of the highest. And this arose from his deep +sympathy with literature as a medium of human expression: he +could enter into the temperaments of other writers, and by +sympathy criticize the literary form from the author’s own +inner standpoint, supposing always that there was a certain +racial kinship with the author. Many who write well +themselves have less sympathy with the expressional forms adopted +by other writers than is displayed by men who have neither the +impulse nor the power to write themselves. But this +sympathy betrayed him sometimes into a free rendering of +locutions such as a translator should be chary of indulging +in. Materials for a volume accumulated slowly, but all the +important portions of the ‘Poems’ published in 1870 +had been in existence some years before that date. The +prose story of ‘Hand and Soul’ was also written as +early as 1848 or 1849.</p> +<p>In the spring of 1860 he married Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, +who being very beautiful was constantly painted and drawn by +him. She <!-- page 75--><a name="page75"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 75</span>had one still-born child in 1861, and +died in February, 1862. He felt her death very acutely, and +for a time ceased to write or to take any interest in his own +poetry. Like Prospero, indeed, he literally buried his +wand, but for a time only. From this time to his death he +continued to produce pictures, all of them showing, as far as +technical skill goes, an unfaltering advance in his art.</p> +<p>Yet wonderful as was Rossetti as an artist and poet, he was +still more wonderful, I think, as a man. The chief +characteristic of his conversation was an incisiveness so perfect +and clear as to have often the pleasurable surprise of wit. +It is so well known that Rossetti has been for a long time the +most retired man of genius of our day, and so many absurd causes +for this retirement have been spoken of, that there is nothing +indecorous in the true cause of it being made public by one who +of late years has known more of him, perhaps, than has any other +person. About 1868 the curse of the artistic and poetic +temperament—insomnia—attacked him, and one of the +most distressing effects of insomnia is a nervous shrinking from +personal contact with any save a few intimate friends. This +peculiar kind of nervousness may be aggravated by the use of +sleeping draughts, and in his case was thus aggravated.</p> +<p>But, although Rossetti lived thus secluded, he did not lose +the affectionate regard of the <!-- page 76--><a +name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 76</span>illustrious +men with whom he started in his artistic life. Nor, +assuredly, did he deserve to lose it, for no man ever lived, I +think, who was so generous as he in sympathizing with other +men’s work, save only when the cruel fumes of chloral +turned him against everything. And his sympathy was as wide +as generous. It was only necessary to mention the name of +Leighton or Millais or Madox Brown or Burne Jones or G. F. Watts, +or, indeed, of any contemporary painter, to get from him a +glowing disquisition upon the merits of each—a disquisition +full of the subtlest distinctions, and illuminated by the +brilliant lights of his matchless fancy. And it was the +same in poetry.</p> +<p>But those who loved Rossetti (that is to say, those who knew +him) can realize how difficult it is for me, a friend, to pursue +just now such reminiscences as these.</p> +<h3><!-- page 77--><a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +77</span>II.</h3> +<p>In his preface Mr. W. M. Rossetti says:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“I have not attempted to write a +biographical account of my brother, nor to estimate the range or +value of his powers and performances in fine art and in +literature. I agree with those who think that a brother is +not the proper person to undertake a work of this sort. An +outsider can do it dispassionately, though with imperfect +knowledge of the facts; a friend can do it with mastery, and +without much undue bias; but a brother, however equitably he may +address himself to the task, cannot perform it so as to secure +the prompt and cordial assent of his readers.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These words will serve as a good example of the dignified +modesty which is a characteristic of Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s, +and is one of the best features of this volume. <a +name="citation77"></a><a href="#footnote77" +class="citation">[77]</a> In these days of empty pretence +it is always refreshing to come upon a page written in the spirit +of scholarly self-suppression which informs every line this +patient and admirable critic writes. And as to the +interesting question glanced at in the passage above quoted, +though the contents of this volume will, no doubt, form valuable +material for the future biography of Rossetti, <!-- page 78--><a +name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span>we wonder +whether the time is even yet at hand when that biography, whether +written by brother, by friend, or by outsider, is needed. +That mysterious entity “the public,” would, no doubt, +like to get one; but we have always shared Rossetti’s own +opinion that a man of genius is no more the property of the +“public” than is any private gentleman; and we have +always felt with him that the prevalence in our time of the +opposite opinion has fashioned so intolerable a yoke for the neck +of any one who has had the misfortune to pass from the sweet +paradise of obscurity into the vulgar purgatory of Fame, that it +almost behoves a man of genius to avoid, if he can, passing into +that purgatory at all.</p> +<p>Can any biography, by whomsoever written, be other than +inchoate and illusory—nay, can it fail to be fraught with +danger to the memory of the dead, with danger to the peace of the +living, until years have fully calmed the air around the dead +man’s grave? So long as the man to be portrayed +cannot be separated from his surroundings, so long as his +portrait cannot be fully and honestly limned without peril to the +peace of those among whom he moved—in a word, so long as +there remains any throb of vitality in those delicate filaments +of social life by which he was enlinked to those with whom he +played his part—that brother, or that friend, or that +outsider who shall attempt the portraiture <!-- page 79--><a +name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 79</span>must feel +what heavy responsibilities are his—must not forget that +with him to trip is to sin against the head. And how shall +he decide when the time has at last come for making the +attempt? Before the incidents of a man’s life can be +exploited without any risk of mischief, how much time should +elapse? “A month,” say the publishers, each one +of whom runs his own special “biographical series,” +and keeps his own special bevy of recording angels writing +against time and against each other. “Thirty +years,” said one whose life-wisdom was so perfect as to be +in a world like ours almost an adequate substitute for the +morality he lacked—Talleyrand.</p> +<p>Of all forms of literary art biography demands from the artist +not only the greatest courage, but also the happiest combination +of the highest gifts. To succeed in painting the portrait +of Achilles or of Priam, of Hamlet or of Othello, may be +difficult, but is it as difficult as to succeed in painting the +portrait of Browning or Rossetti? Surely not. In the +one case an intense dramatic imagination is needed, and nothing +more. If Homer’s Achaian and Trojan heroes were +falsely limned, not they, but Homer’s art, would suffer the +injury. If for the purposes of art the poet unduly exalted +this one or unduly abased that—if he misread one incident +in the mythical life of Achilles, and another in the mythical +life of Hector—he did <!-- page 80--><a +name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>wrong to his +art undoubtedly, but none to the memory of a dead man, and none +to the peace of a living one. But with him who would paint +the portrait of Browning or Rossetti how different is the +case! Although he requires the poet’s vision before +he can paint a living picture of his subject, the task he has set +himself to do is something more than artistic: before everything +else it is fiduciary.</p> +<p>A trustee whose trust fund is biographical truth, he has, +after collecting and marshalling all the facts that come to his +hand, to decide what is truth as indicated by those generalized +facts. But having done this, he has to decide what is the +proper time for giving the world the truth, the whole truth, and +nothing but the truth—what is the proper time? In the +biographer’s relation to the dead man on the one-hand and +to the public on the other should he be so unhappy as to forget +that time is of the very “essence of the +contract”—should he forget that so inwoven is human +life that truth spoken at the wrong moment may be a greater +mischief-worker than error—he may, if conscientious, have +to remember that forgetfulness of his during the remainder of his +days. He who thinks that truth may not be sometimes as +mischievous as a pestilence knows but little of this mysterious +and wonderful net of human life. But if this is so with +regard to truth, how much more is it so with regard to mere +matter <!-- page 81--><a name="page81"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 81</span>of fact? Fact-worship, +document-worship, is at once the crowning folly and the crowning +vice of our time. To mistake a fact for a truth, and to +give the world that; to throw facts about and documents about +heedless of the mischief they may work—wronging the dead +and wronging the living—this is actually paraded as a +virtue in these days.</p> +<p>Here is a case in point. Down to the very last moment of +his life Rossetti’s feeling towards his great contemporary +Tennyson was that of the deepest admiration, and yet what says +the documentary evidence as given to the world by +Rossetti’s brother? It shows that Rossetti used an +extremely unpleasant phrase concerning a letter from Tennyson +acknowledging the receipt of Rossetti’s first volume of +poems in 1870. Those who have heard Tennyson speak of +Rossetti know that to use this phrase in relation to any letter +of his dealing with Rossetti’s poetry was to misunderstand +it. Yet here are the unpleasant words of a hasty mood, +“rather shabby,” in print. And why? +Because the public has become so demoralized that its feast of +facts, its feast of documents it must have, come what will. +But even supposing that the public had any rights whatsoever in +regard to a man of genius, which we deny, what are letters as +indications of a man’s character? Of all modes of +expression is not the epistolary mode that in which man’s +<!-- page 82--><a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +82</span>instinct for using language “to disguise his +thought” is most likely to exercise itself? There is +likely to be far more deep sincerity in a sonnet than in a +letter. It is no exaggeration to say that the common +courtesies of life demand a certain amount of what is called +“blarney” in a letter—especially in an eminent +man’s letter—which would ruin a sonnet. And +this must be steadily borne in mind at a time like ours, when +private letters are bought and sold like any other article of +merchandise, not only immediately after a man’s death, but +during his lifetime.</p> +<p>With regard to literary men, their letters in former times +were simply artistic compositions; hence as indications of +character they must be judged by the same canons as literary +essays would be judged. In both cases the writer had full +space and full time to qualify his statements of opinion; in both +cases he was without excuse for throwing out anything +heedlessly. Not only in Walpole’s case and +Gray’s, but also in Charles Lamb’s, we apply the same +rules of criticism to the letters as we apply to the published +utterances that appeared in the writer’s lifetime. +But now, when letters are just the hurried expression of the +moment, when ill-considered things—often rash +things—are said which either in literary compositions or in +conversation would have been, if said at all, greatly +qualified—the greatest injustice that <!-- page 83--><a +name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>can be done +to a writer is to print his letters indiscriminately. +Especially is this the case with Rossetti. All who knew him +speak of him as being a superb critic, and a superb critic he +was. But his printed letters show nothing of the +kind. On literary subjects they are often full of +over-statement and of biased judgment. Here is the +explanation: in conversation he had a way of perpetrating a +brilliant critical paradox for the very purpose of qualifying it, +turning it about, colouring it by the lights of his wonderful +fancy, until at last it became something quite different from the +original paradox, and full of truth and wisdom. But when +such a paradox went off in a letter, there it remained +unqualified; and they who, not having known him, scoff at his +friends who claim for him the honours of a great critic, seem to +scoff with reason.</p> +<p>No one was more conscious of the treachery of letters than was +Rossetti himself. Comparatively late in his life he +realized what all eminent men would do well to realize, that +owing to the degradation of public taste, which cries out for +more personal gossip and still more every day, the time has fully +come when every man of mark must consider the rights of his +friends—when it behoves every man who has had the +misfortune to pass into fame to burn all letters; and he began +the holocaust that duty to friendship demanded of him. But +the <!-- page 84--><a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +84</span>work of reading through such a correspondence as his in +order to see what letters must be preserved from the burning took +more time and more patience than he had contemplated, and the +destruction did not progress further than to include the letters +of the early sixties. Business letters it was, of course, +necessary to preserve, and very properly it is from these that +Mr. W. M. Rossetti has mainly quoted.</p> +<p>The volume is divided into two parts: first, documents +relating to the production of certain of Rossetti’s +pictures and poems; and second, a prose paraphrase of ‘The +House of Life.’</p> +<p>The documents consist of abstracts of and extracts from such +portions of Rossetti’s correspondence as have fallen into +his brother’s hands as executor. Dealing as they +necessarily do with those complications of prices and those +involved commissions for which Rossetti’s artistic career +was remarkable, there is a commercial air about the first portion +of the book which some will think out of harmony with their +conception of the painter, about whom there used to be such a +mysterious interest until much writing about him had brought him +into the light of common day. In future years a summary so +accurate and so judicious as this will seem better worth making +than it, perhaps, seems at the present moment; for Mr. W. M. +Rossetti’s love of facts is accompanied by an equally +strong love of making an honest statement <!-- page 85--><a +name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 85</span>of +facts—a tabulated statement, if possible; and no one +writing of Rossetti need hesitate about following his brother to +the last letter and to the last figure.</p> +<p>To be precise and perspicuous is, he hints in his preface, +better than to be graphic and entertaining; and we entirely agree +with him, especially when the subject discussed is Rossetti, +about whom so many fancies that are neither precise nor +perspicuous are current. Still, to read about this picture +being offered to one buyer and that to another, and rejected or +accepted at a greatly reduced price after much chaffering, is +not, we will confess, exhilarating reading to those to whom +Rossetti’s pictures are also poems. It does not +conduce to the happiness of his admirers to think of such works +being produced under such prosaic conditions. One +buyer—a most worthy man, to be sure, and a true friend of +Rossetti’s, but full of that British superstition about the +saving grace of clothes which is so wonderful a revelation to the +pensive foreigner—had to be humoured in his craze against +the nude. After having painted a beautiful partly-draped +Gretchen (which, we may remark in passing, had no relation, as +Mr. W. M. Rossetti supposes, to the Marguerite alluded to in a +letter to Mr. Graham in 1870) from a new model whose +characteristics were a superb bosom and arms, he, Rossetti, was +obliged to consent to conceal the best portions of the picture +under drapery.</p> +<p><!-- page 86--><a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +86</span>That this was a matter of great and peculiar vexation to +him may be supposed when it is remembered that unequalled as had +been his good fortune in finding fine face-models (ladies of +position and culture, and often of extraordinary beauty), he had +in the matter of figure-models been most unlucky. And this, +added to his slight knowledge of anatomy, made all his nude +pictures undesirable save those few painted from the beautiful +girl who stood for ‘The Spirit of the Rainbow’ and +‘Forced Music.’ What his work from the nude +suffered from this is incalculable, as may be seen in the crayon +called ‘Ligeia Siren,’ a naked siren playing on a +kind of lute, which Rossetti described as “certainly one of +his best things.” The beauty and value of a crayon +which for weird poetry—especially in the eyes—must be +among Rossetti’s masterpieces are ruined by the drawing of +the breasts.</p> +<p>The most interesting feature of the book, however, is not that +which deals with the prices Rossetti got for his pictures, but +that which tells the reader the place where and the conditions +under which they were painted; and no portion of the book is more +interesting than that which relates to the work done at +Kelmscott:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“At the beginning of this year 1874 Rossetti +was again occupied with the picture which he had commenced in the +preceding spring, entitled, <!-- page 87--><a +name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>‘The +Bower Maiden’—a girl in a room with a pot of +marigolds and a black cat. It was painted from +‘little Annie’ (a cottage-girl and house assistant at +Kelmscott), and it ‘goes on’ (to quote the words of +one of his letters) ‘like a house on fire. This is +the only kind of picture one ought to do—just copying the +materials, and no more: all others are too much +trouble.’ It is not difficult to understand that the +painter of a ‘Proserpine’ and a +‘Ghirlandata’ would occasionally feel the luxury of a +mood intellectually lazy, and would be minded to give voice to +it—as in this instance—in terms wilfully extreme; +keeping his mental eye none the less steadily directed to a +‘Roman Widow’ or a ‘Blessed Damozel’ in +the near future. As a matter of fact, my brother painted +very few things, at any stage of his career, as mere +representations of reality, unimbued by some inventive or ideal +meaning: in the rare instances when he did so, he naturally felt +an indolent comfort, and made no scruple of putting the feeling +into words—highly suitable for being taken <i>cum grano +salis</i>. Nothing was more alien from his nature or habit +than ‘tall talk’ of any kind about his aims, +aspirations, or performances. It was into his +work—not into his utterances about his work—that he +infused the higher and deeper elements of his spirit. +‘The Bower Maiden’ was finished early in February, +and sold to Mr. Graham for 682<i>l.</i>, after it had been +offered to Mr. Leyland at a rather higher figure, and +declined. It has also passed under the names of +‘Fleurs de Marie,’ ‘Marigolds,’ and +‘The Gardener’s Daughter.’ After +‘The Bower Maiden’ had <!-- page 88--><a +name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span>been disposed +of, other work was taken up—more especially ‘The +Roman Widow,’ bearing the alternative title of +‘Dîs Manibus,’ which was in an advanced stage +by the month of May, and was completed in June or July. It +was finished with little or no glazing. The Roman widow is +a lady still youthful, in a grey fawn-tinted drapery, with a +musical instrument in each hand; she is in the sepulchral chamber +of her husband, whose stone urn appears in the background. +I possess the antique urn which my brother procured, and which he +used for the painting. For graceful simplicity, and for +depth of earnest but not strained sentiment, he never, I think, +exceeded ‘The Roman Widow.’ The two instruments +seem to repeat the two mottoes on the urn, ‘Ave +Domine—Vale Domine.’ The head was painted from +Miss Wilding, already mentioned; but it seems to me partly +associated with the type of Mrs. Stillman’s face as +well. There are many roses in this picture—both wild +and garden roses; they kept the artist waiting a little after the +work was otherwise finished. ‘I really think it looks +well,’ he wrote on one occasion; ‘its fair luminous +colour seems to melt into the gold frame (which has only just +come) like a part of it.’ He feared that the picture +might be ‘too severe and tragic’ for some tastes; but +could add (not, perhaps, with undue confidence), ‘I +don’t think Géricault or Régnault would have +quite scorned it.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The magnificent design here alluded to, ‘Dîs +Manibus,’ entirely suggested by the urn, which had somewhat +come into his possession (probably <!-- page 89--><a +name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 89</span>through +Howell), and also ‘The Bower Maiden,’ suggested by +his accidentally seeing a pretty cottage-child lifting some +marigolds to a shelf, formed part of the superb work produced by +Rossetti during his long retirement at Kelmscott Manor—that +period never before recorded, which has at this very moment been +brought into prominence by his friend Dr. Hake’s +sonnet-sequence ‘The New Day,’ just published. +As far as literary and artistic work goes, it was, perhaps, the +richest period of his life; and that it was also one of the +happiest is clear not only from his own words, but also from the +following testimony of Dr. Hake, who saw much of him +there:—</p> +<blockquote><p>O, happy days with him who once so loved us!<br /> + We loved as brothers, with a single heart,<br /> +The man whose iris-woven pictures moved us<br /> + From nature to her blazoned shadow—Art.<br /> +How often did we trace the nestling Thames<br /> + From humblest waters on his course of might,<br /> +Down where the weir the bursting current stems—<br /> + There sat till evening grew to balmy night,<br /> +Veiling the weir whose roar recalled the Strand<br /> + Where we had listened to the wave-lipped sea,<br /> +That seemed to utter plaudits while we planned<br /> + Triumphal labours of the day to be.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It was at Kelmscott, in the famous tapestried room, that +besides painting the ‘Proserpine,’ ‘The Roman +Widow,’ &c., he wrote many of his later poems, +including ‘Rose Mary.’</p> +<p>Considering how deep is Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s affection +for his brother’s memory, and how great is his admiration +for his brother’s work, <!-- page 90--><a +name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>it is +remarkable how judicial is his mind when writing about him. +This is what he says about the much discussed ‘Venus +Astarte’:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Into the ‘Venus Astarte’ he had +put his utmost intensity of thinking, feeling, and +method—he had aimed to make it equally strong in abstract +sentiment and in physical grandeur—an ideal of the mystery +of beauty, offering a sort of combined quintessence of what he +had endeavoured in earlier years to embody in the two several +types of ‘Sibylla Palmifera’ and +‘Lilith,’ or (as he ultimately named them in the +respective sonnets) ‘Soul’s Beauty’ and +‘Body’s Beauty.’ It may be well to remark +that, by the time when he completed the ‘Venus +Astarte,’ or ‘Astarte Syriaca,’ he had got into +a more austere feeling than of old with regard to colour and +chiaroscuro; and the charm of the picture has, I am aware, been +less, to many critics and spectators of the work, than he would +have deemed to be its due, as compared with some of his other +performances of more obvious and ostensible +attraction.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Though Mr. W. M. Rossetti is right in saying that it was not +till the beginning of 1877 that this remarkable picture was +brought to a conclusion, the main portions were done during that +long sojourn at Bognor in 1876–7, which those who have +written about Rossetti have hitherto left unrecorded. +Having fallen into ill health after his return to London from +Kelmscott, he was advised to go to the seaside, and a large house +at Bognor was finally selected. <!-- page 91--><a +name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>No doubt one +reason why the preference was given to Bognor was the fact that +Blake’s cottage at Felpham was close by, for businesslike +and unbusiness-like qualities were strangely mingled in +Rossetti’s temperament, and it was generally some sentiment +or unpractical fancy of this kind that brought about +Rossetti’s final decision upon anything. +Blake’s name was with him still a word to charm with, and +he was surprised to find, on the first pilgrimage of himself and +his friends to the cottage, that scarcely a person in the +neighbourhood knew what Blake it was that “the +Londoners” were inquiring about.</p> +<p>To the secluded house at Bognor—a house so surrounded by +trees and shrubs that the murmur of the waves mingling with the +whispers of the leaves seemed at one moment the sea’s +voice, and at another the voice of the earth—Rossetti took +not only the cartoon of the ‘Astarte Syriaca,’ but +also the most peculiar of all his pictures, ‘The Blessed +Damozel,’ which had long lain in an incomplete state. +But it was not much painting that he did at Bognor. From a +cause he tried in vain to understand, and tried in vain to +conquer, his thoughts ran upon poetry, and refused to fix +themselves upon art. Partly this might have been owing to +the fact that now, comparatively late in life, he to whom, as his +brother well says, “such words as <i>sea</i>, <i>ship</i>, +and <i>boat</i> were <!-- page 92--><a name="page92"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 92</span>generic terms admitting of little +specific and still less of any individual and detailed +distinction,” awoke to the fascination that the sea sooner +or later exercises upon all truly romantic souls. For deep +as is the poetry of the inland woods, the Spirit of Romance, if +there at all, is there in hiding. In order for that Spirit +to come forth and take captive the soul something else is wanted; +howsoever thick and green the trees—howsoever bright and +winding the streams—a magical glimmer of sea-light far or +near must shine through the branches as they wave.</p> +<p>That this should be a new experience to so fine a poet as +Rossetti was no doubt strange, but so it chanced to be. He +whose talk at Kelmscott had been of ‘Blessed +Damozels’ and ‘Roman Widows’ and the like, +talked now of the wanderings of Ulysses, of ‘The Ancient +Mariner,’ of ‘Sir Patrick Spens,’ and even of +‘Arthur Gordon Pym’ and ‘Allan +Gordon.’ And on hearing a friend recite some +tentative verses on a great naval battle, he looked about for sea +subjects too; and it was now, and not later, as is generally +supposed, that he really thought of the subject of ‘The +White Ship,’ a subject apparently so alien from his +genius. Every evening he used to take walks on the beach +for miles and miles, delighted with a beauty that before had had +no charms for him. Still, the ‘Astarte Syriaca’ +did progress, <!-- page 93--><a name="page93"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 93</span>though slowly, and became the +masterpiece that Mr. W. M. Rossetti sets so high among his +brother’s work.</p> +<blockquote><p>“From Bognor my brother returned to his +house in Cheyne Walk; and in the summer he paid a visit to two of +his kindest and most considerate friends, Lord and Lady +Mount-Temple, at their seat of Broadlands in Hampshire. He +executed there a portrait in chalks of Lady Mount-Temple. +He went on also with the picture of ‘The Blessed +Damozel.’ For the head of an infant angel which +appears in the front of this picture he made drawings from two +children—one being the baby of the Rev. H. C. Hawtrey, and +the other a workhouse infant. The former sketch was +presented to the parents of the child and the latter to Lady +Mount-Temple; and the head with its wings, was painted on to the +canvas at Broadlands.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Mr. W. M. Rossetti omits to mention that the landscape which +forms the predella to ‘The Blessed Damozel,’ a river +winding in a peculiarly tortuous course through the cedars and +other wide-spread trees of an English park, was taken from the +scenery of Broadlands—that fairyland of soft beauty which +lived in his memory as it must needs live in the memory of every +one who has once known it. But the wonder is that such a +mass of solid material has been compressed into so small a +space.</p> +<p>Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s paraphrase of ‘The House of +Life’—done with so much admiration <!-- page 94--><a +name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>of his +brother’s genius and affection for his memory—touches +upon a question relating to poetic art which has been raised +before—raised in connexion with prose renderings of Homer, +Sophocles, and Dante: Are poetry and prose so closely related in +method that one can ever be adequately turned into the +other? Schiller no doubt wrote his dramas in prose and then +turned them into rhetorical verse; but then there are those who +affirm that Schiller’s rhetorical verse is scarcely +poetry. The importance of the question will be seen when we +call to mind that if such a transmutation of form were possible, +translations of poetry would be possible; for though, owing to +the tyrannous demands of form, the verse of one language can +never be translated into the verse of another, it can always be +rendered in the prose of another, only it then ceases to be +poetry.</p> +<p>That the intellectual, and even to some extent the emotional, +substance of a poem can be seized and covered by a prose +translation is seen in Prof. Jebb’s rendering of the +‘Œdipus Rex’; but, as we have before remarked, +the fundamental difference between imaginative prose and poetry +is that, while the one must be informed with intellectual life +and emotional life, the other has to be informed with both these +kinds of life, and with another life beyond these—rhythmic +life. Now, if we wished to show that rhythmic life is in +poetry the most <!-- page 95--><a name="page95"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 95</span>important of all, our example would, +we think, be Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s prose paraphrase of his +brother’s sonnets. The obstacles against the adequate +turning of poetry into prose can be best understood by +considering the obstacles against the adequate turning of prose +into poetry. Prose notes tracing out the course of the +future poem may, no doubt, be made, and usefully made, by the +poet (as Wordsworth said in an admirable letter to Gillies), +unless, indeed, the notes form too elaborate an attempt at a full +prose expression of the subject-matter, in which case, so soon as +the poet tries to rise on his winged words, his wingless words +are likely to act as a dead weight. For this reason, when +Wordsworth said that the prose notes should be brief, he might +almost as well have gone on to say that in expression they should +be slovenly. This at least may be said, that the moment the +language of the prose note is so “adequate” and rich +that it seems to be what Wordsworth would call the natural +“incarnation of the thought,” the poet’s +imagination, if it escapes at all from the chains of the prose +expression, escapes with great difficulty. An instance of +this occurred in Rossetti’s own experience.</p> +<p>During one of those seaside rambles alluded to above, while he +was watching with some friends the billows tumbling in beneath +the wintry moon, some one, perhaps Rossetti <!-- page 96--><a +name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>himself, +directed attention to the peculiar effect of the moon’s +disc reflected in the white surf, and compared it to fire in +snow. Rossetti, struck with the picturesqueness of the +comparison, made there and then an elaborate prose note of it in +one of the diminutive pocket-books that he was in the habit of +carrying in the capacious pocket of his waistcoat. Years +afterwards—shortly before his death, in fact—when he +came to write ‘The King’s Tragedy,’ remembering +this note, he thought he could find an excellent place for it in +the scene where the king meets the Spae wife on the seashore and +listens to her prophecies of doom. But he was at once +confronted by this obstacle: so elaborately had the image of the +moon reflected in the surf been rendered in the prose +note—so entirely did the prose matter seem to be the +inevitable and the final incarnation of the thought—that it +appeared impossible to escape from it into the movement and the +diction proper to poetry. It was only after much +labour—a labour greater than he had given to all the +previous stanzas combined—that he succeeded in freeing +himself from the fetters of the prose, and in painting the +picture in these words:—</p> +<blockquote><p>That eve was clenched for a boding storm<br /> + ’Neath a toilsome moon half seen;<br /> +The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high;<br /> +And where there was a line of sky,<br /> + Wild wings loomed dark between.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * *</p> +<p><!-- page 97--><a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +97</span>’Twas then the moon sailed clear of the rack<br /> + On high on her hollow dome;<br /> +And still as aloft with hoary crest<br /> + Each clamorous wave rang home,<br /> +Like fire in snow the moonlight blazed<br /> + Amid the champing foam.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And the remark was then made to him with regard to +Coleridge’s ‘Wanderings of Cain,’ that it is +not unlikely the matchless fragment given in Coleridge’s +poems might have passed nearer towards completion, or at least +towards the completion of the first part, had it not been for +those elaborate and beautiful prose notes which he has left +behind.</p> +<p>And if the attempt to turn prose into poetry is hopeless, the +attempt to turn poetry into prose is no less so, and for a like +reason—that of the immense difficulty of passing from the +movement natural to one mood into the movement natural to +another. And this criticism applies especially to the +poetry of Rossetti, which produces so many of its best effects by +means not of logical statement, but of the music and suggestive +richness of rhythmical language. That Rossetti did on some +occasions, when told that his sonnets were unintelligible, talk +about making such a paraphrase himself is indisputable, because +Mr. Fairfax Murray say that he heard him say so. But +indisputable also is many another saying of Rossetti’s, +equally ill-considered and equally impracticable. That he +ever seriously thought of doing so is most unlikely.</p> +<h3><!-- page 98--><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +98</span>III.</h3> +<p>In his memoir of his brother, Mr. William Michael Rossetti +thus makes mention of a ballad left by the poet which still +remains unpublished:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“It [the ballad] is most fully worthy of +publication, but has not been included in Rossetti’s +‘Collected Works,’ because he gave the MS. to his +devoted friend Mr. Theodore Watts, with whom alone now rests the +decision of presenting it or not to the public.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And he afterwards mentions certain sonnets on the Sphinx, also +in my possession.</p> +<p>With the most generous intentions my dear and loyal friend +William Rossetti has here brought me into trouble.</p> +<p>Naturally such an announcement as the above has excited great +curiosity among admirers of Rossetti, and I am frequently +receiving letters—some of them cordial enough, but others +far from cordial—asking, or rather demanding, to know the +reason why important poems of Rossetti’s have for so long a +period been withheld from the public. In order to explain +the delay I must first give two extracts from Mr. Hall +Caine’s picturesque ‘Recollections of +Rossetti,’ published in 1882:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The end was drawing near, and we all knew +<!-- page 99--><a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +99</span>the fact. Rossetti had actually taken to poetical +composition afresh, and had written a facetious ballad (conceived +years before), of the length of ‘The White Ship,’ +called ‘Jan Van Hunks,’ embodying an eccentric story +of a Dutchman’s wager to smoke against the devil. +This was to appear in a miscellany of stories and poems by +himself and Mr. Theodore Watts, a project which had been a +favourite one of his for some years, and in which he now, in his +last moments, took a revived interest, strange and +strong.”</p> +<p>“On Wednesday morning, April 5th, I went into the +bedroom to which he had for some days been confined, and wrote +out to his dictation two sonnets which he had composed on a +design of his called ‘The Sphinx,’ and which he +wished to give, together with the drawing and the ballad before +described, to Mr. Watts for publication in the volume just +mentioned. On the Thursday morning I found his utterance +thick, and his speech from that cause hardly +intelligible.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>As the facts in connexion with this project exhibit, with a +force that not all the words of all his detractors can withstand, +the splendid generosity of the poet’s nature, I only wish +that I had made them public years ago, Rossetti (whose power of +taking interest in a friend’s work Mr. Joseph Knight has +commented upon) had for years been urging me to publish certain +writings of mine with which he was familiar, and for years I had +declined to do so—declined for two simple reasons: first, +though I liked <!-- page 100--><a name="page100"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 100</span>writing for its own +sake—indulged in it, indeed, as a delightful +luxury—to enter formally the literary arena, and to go +through that struggle which, as he himself used to say, +“had never yet brought comfort to any poet, but only +sorrow,” had never been an ambition of mine; and, secondly, +I was only too conscious how biased must the judgment be of a man +whose affections were so strong as his when brought to bear upon +the work of a friend.</p> +<p>In order at last to achieve an end upon which he had set his +heart, he proposed that he and I should jointly produce the +volume to which Mr. Hall Caine refers, and that he should enrich +it with reproductions of certain drawings of his, including the +‘Sphinx’ (now or lately in the possession of Mr. +William Rossetti) and crayons and pencil drawings in my own +possession illustrating poems of mine—those drawings, I +mean, from that new model chosen by me whose head Leighton said +must be the loveliest ever drawn, who sat for ‘The Spirit +of the Rainbow,’ and that other design which William Sharp +christened ‘Forced Music.’</p> +<p>In order to conquer my most natural reluctance to see a name +so unknown as mine upon a title-page side by side with a name so +illustrious as his, he (or else it was his generous sister +Christina, I forget which) italianized the words Walter Theodore +Watts into “Gualtiero Teodoro Gualtieri”—a +name, I may add in <!-- page 101--><a name="page101"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 101</span>passing, which appears as an +inscription on one at least of the valuable Christmas presents he +made me, a rare old Venetian Boccaccio. My portion of the +book was already in existence, but that which was to have been +the main feature of the volume, a ballad of Rossetti’s to +be called ‘Michael Scott’s Wooing’ (which had +no relation to early designs of his bearing that name), hung fire +for this reason: the story upon which the ballad was to have been +based was discovered to be not an old legend adapted and varied +by the Romanies, as I had supposed when I gave it to him, but +simply the Ettrick Shepherd’s novelette ‘Mary +Burnet’; and the project then rested in abeyance until that +last illness at Birchington painted so graphically and +pathetically by Mr. Hall Caine.</p> +<p>For some reason quite inscrutable to the late John Marshall, +who attended him, and to all of us, this old idea seized upon his +brain; so much so, indeed, that Marshall hailed it as a good +omen, and advised us to foster it, which we did with excellent +results, as will be seen by referring to the very last entry in +his mother’s touching diary as lately printed by Mr. W. M. +Rossetti: “March 28, Tuesday. Mr. Watts came +down. Gabriel rallied marvellously.”</p> +<p>Though the ballad, in Rossetti’s own writing, has ever +since remained in my possession, as have also the two sonnets in +the MS. of another friend who has since, I am delighted to know, +<!-- page 102--><a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +102</span>achieved fame for himself, no one who enjoyed the +intimate friendship of Rossetti need be told that his death took +from me all heart to publish.</p> +<p>Time, however, is the suzerain before whom every king, even +Sorrow himself, bows at last. The rights of +Rossetti’s admirers can no longer be set at nought, and I +am making arrangements to publish within the present year +‘Jan Van Hunks’ and the ‘Sphinx Sonnets,’ +the former of which will show a new and, I think, unexpected side +of Rossetti’s genius.</p> +<h3><!-- page 103--><a name="page103"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 103</span>IV.</h3> +<p>It is a sweet and comforting thought for every poet that, +whether or not the public cares during his life to read his +verses, it will after his death care very much to read his +letters to his mistress, to his wife, to his relatives, to his +friends, to his butcher, and to his baker. And some letters +are by that same public held to be more precious than +others. If, for instance, it has chanced that during the +poet’s life he, like Rossetti, had to borrow thirty +shillings from a friend, that is a circumstance of especial +piquancy. The public likes—or rather it +demands—to know all about that borrowed cash. Hence +it behoves the properly equipped editor who understands his duty +to see that not one allusion to it in the poet’s +correspondence is omitted. If he can also show what caused +the poet to borrow those thirty shillings—if he can by +learned annotations show whether the friend in question lent the +sum willingly or unwillingly, conveniently or +inconveniently—if he can show whether the loan was ever +repaid, and if repaid when—he will be a happy editor +indeed. Then he will find a large and a grateful public to +whom the mood in which the poet sat down to write <!-- page +104--><a name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +104</span>‘The Blessed Damosel’ is of far less +interest than the mood in which he borrowed thirty shillings.</p> +<p>We do not charge the editor of this volume <a +name="citation104"></a><a href="#footnote104" +class="citation">[104]</a> with exhibiting unusual want of +taste. On the whole, he is less irritating to the poetical +student than those who have laboured in kindred “fields of +literature.” Indeed, we do not so much blame the +editors of such books as we blame the public, whose coarse and +vulgar mouth is always agape for such pabulum. The writer +of this review possesses an old circulating-library copy of a +book containing some letters of Coleridge. One page, and +one only, is greatly disfigured by thumb marks. It is the +page on which appears, not some precious hint as to the +conclusion of ‘Christabel,’ but a domestic missive of +Coleridge’s ordering broad beans for dinner.</p> +<p>If, then, the name of those readers who take an interest in +broad beans is legion compared with the name of those who take an +interest in ‘Kubla Khan,’ is not the wise editor he +who gives all due attention to the poet’s favourite +vegetable? Those who will read with avidity +Rossetti’s allusion to his wife’s confinement in the +letter in which he tells Allingham that “the child had been +dead for two or <!-- page 105--><a name="page105"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 105</span>three weeks” will laugh to +scorn the above remarks, and as they are in the majority the +laugh is with them.</p> +<p>The editor of this volume laments that Allingham’s +letters to Rossetti are beyond all editorial reach. But who +has any right to ask for Allingham’s private letters? +Rossetti, who was strongly against the printing of private +letters, had the wholesome practice of burning all his +correspondence. This he did at periodical +holocausts—memorable occasions when the coruscations of the +poet’s wit made the sparks from the burning paper seem pale +and dull. He died away from home, or not a scrap of +correspondence would have been left for the publishers. +Although the “public” acknowledges no duties towards +the man of literary or artistic genius, but would shrug up its +shoulders or look with dismay at being asked to give five pounds +in order to keep a poet from the workhouse, the moment a man of +genius becomes famous the public becomes aware of certain rights +in relation to him. Strangely enough, these rights are +recognized more fully in the literary arena than anywhere else, +and among them the chief appears to be that of reading an +author’s private letters. One advantage—and +surely it is a very great one—that the “writing +man” has over the man of action is this: that, while the +portrait of the man of action has to be painted, if painted at +all, by <!-- page 106--><a name="page106"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 106</span>the biographer, the writing man +paints his own portrait for himself.</p> +<p>And as, in a deep sense, every biographer is an inventor like +the novelist—as from the few facts that he is able to +collect he infers a character—the man of action, after he +is dead, is at the mercy of every man who writes his life. +Is not Alexander the Great no less a figment of another +man’s brain than Achilles, or Macbeth, or Mr. +Pickwick? But a poet, howsoever artistic, howsoever +dramatic, the form of his work may be, is occupied during his +entire life in painting his own portrait. And if it were +not for the intervention of the biographer, the reminiscence +writer, or the collector of letters for publication, our +conception of every poet would be true and vital according to the +intelligence with which we read his work.</p> +<p>This is why, of all English poets, Shakespeare is the only one +whom we do thoroughly know—unless perhaps we should except +his two great contemporaries Webster and Marlowe. Steevens +did not exaggerate when he said that all we know of +Shakespeare’s outer life is that he was born at +Stratford-on-Avon, married, went to London, wrote plays, returned +to Stratford, and died. Owing to this circumstance (and a +blessed one it is) we can commune with the greatest of our poets +undisturbed. We know how Shakespeare confronted every +circumstance of this mysterious life—we know how he +confronted <!-- page 107--><a name="page107"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 107</span>the universe, seen and +unseen—we know to what degree and in what way he felt every +human passion. There is no careless letter of his, thank +God! to give us a wrong impression of him. There is no +record of his talk at the Mermaid, the Falcon, or the Apollo +saloon to make readers doubtful whether his printed utterances +truly represent him. Would that the will had been +destroyed! then there would have been no talk about the +“second-best bed” and the like insane gabble. +Suppose, by ill chance, a batch of his letters to Anna Hathaway +had been preserved. Is it not a moral certainty that they +would have been as uninteresting as the letters of Coleridge, of +Scott, of Dickens, of Rossetti, and of Rossetti’s +sister?</p> +<p>Why are the letters of literary men apt to be so much less +interesting than those of other people? Is it not because, +the desire to express oneself in written language being +universal, this desire with people outside the literary class has +to be of necessity exercised in letter-writing? Is it not +because, where there is no other means of written expression than +that of letter-writing, the best efforts of the letter-writer are +put into the composition, as the best writing of the essayist is +put into his essays? However this might have been in +Shakespeare’s time, the half-conscious, graphic power of +the non-literary letter-writer of to-day is often so <!-- page +108--><a name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +108</span>great that if all the letters written in English by +non-literary people, especially letters written from abroad to +friends at home in the year 1897, <a name="citation108"></a><a +href="#footnote108" class="citation">[108]</a> were collected, +and the cream of them extracted and printed, the book would be +the most precious literary production that the year has to +show. If, on the other hand, the letters of contemporary +English authors were collected in the same way, the poverty of +the book would be amazing as compared with the published writings +of the authors. With regard to Dickens’s letters, +indeed, the contrast between their commonplace, colourless style +and the pregnancy of his printed utterances makes the writing in +his books seem forced, artificial, unnatural.</p> +<p>The same may in some degree be said of such letters of +Rossetti as have hitherto been published. The charming +family letters printed by his brother come, of course, under a +different category. With the exception of these, perhaps +the letters in the volume before us are the most interesting +Rossetti letters that have been printed. Yet it is +astonishing how feeble they are in giving the reader an idea of +Rossetti himself. And this gives birth to the question: Do +we not live at a time when the unfairness of printing an +author’s letters is greater than it ever was before? +To go no further back than the early years of the present +century, the <!-- page 109--><a name="page109"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 109</span>facilities of locomotion were then +few, friends were necessarily separated from each other by long +intervals of time, and letters were a very important part of +intercommunication, consequently it might be expected that even +among authors a good deal of a man’s individuality would be +expressed in his letters. But even at that period it was +only a quite exceptional nature like that of Charles Lamb which +adequately expressed itself in epistolary form. +Keats’s letters, no doubt, are full of good sense and good +criticism, but taking them as a body, including the letters to +Fanny Brawne, we think it were better if they had been totally +destroyed. As to Byron’s letters, they, of course, +are admirable in style and full of literary life, but their very +excellence shows that his natural mode of expression was +brilliant, slashing prose. But if it was unfair to publish +the letters of Coleridge and Keats, what shall we say of the +publication of letters written by the authors of our own day, +when, owing to an entire change in the conditions of life, no one +dreams of putting into his letters anything of literary +interest?</p> +<p>When Rossetti died he was, as regards the public, owing to his +exclusiveness, much in the same position as Shakespeare has +always been. The picture of Rossetti that lived in the +public mind was that of a poet and painter of extraordinary +imaginative intensity and magic, whose <!-- page 110--><a +name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +110</span>personality, as romantic as his work, influenced all +who came in contact with him. He was, indeed, the only +romantic figure in the imagination of the literary and art world +of his time. It seemed as if in his very name there was an +unaccountable music. The present writer well remembers +being at a dinner-party many years ago when the late Lord +Leighton was talking in his usual delightful way. His +conversation was specially attended to only by his interlocutor, +until the name of Rossetti fell from his lips. Then the +general murmur of tongues ceased. Everybody wanted to hear +what was being said about the mysterious poet-painter. Thus +matters stood when Rossetti died. Within forty-eight hours +of his death the many-headed beast clamoured for its +rights. Within forty-eight hours of his death there was a +leading article in an important newspaper on the subject of his +suspiciousness as the result of chloral-drinking. And from +that moment the romance has been rubbed off the picture as +effectually by many of those who have written about him as the +bloom is fingered off of a clumsily gathered peach.</p> +<p>But the reader will say, “Truth is great, and must +prevail. The picture of Rossetti that now exists in the +public mind is the true one. The former picture was a +lie.” But here the reader will be much +mistaken. The romantic picture which existed in the public +mind during Rossetti’s <!-- page 111--><a +name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>life was +the true one; the picture that now exists of him is false.</p> +<p>Does any one want to know what kind of a man was the painter +of ‘Dante’s Dream’ and the poet of ‘The +Blessed Damosel,’ let him wipe out of his mind most of what +has been written about him, let him forget if he can most of the +Rossetti letters that have been published, and let him read the +poet’s poems and study the painter’s pictures, and he +will know Rossetti—not, indeed, so thoroughly as we know +Shakespeare and Æschylus and Sophocles, but as intimately +as it is possible to know any man whose biography is written only +in his works.</p> +<p>It must be admitted, however, that for those who had a +personal knowledge of Rossetti some of the letters in this volume +will have an interest, owing to the evidence they afford of that +authorial generosity which was one of his most beautiful +characteristics. His disinterested appreciation of the work +of his contemporaries sets him apart from all the other poets of +his time and perhaps of any other time. To wax eloquent in +praise of this and that illustrious name, and thus to claim a +kind of kinship with it, is a very different thing from +Rossetti’s noble championship of a name, whether that of a +friend or otherwise, which has never emerged from +obscurity. It is perhaps inevitable and in the nature of +things that most poets are too much absorbed in their own work to +have time <!-- page 112--><a name="page112"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 112</span>to interest themselves in the doings +of their fellow-workers.</p> +<p>But, with regard to Rossetti, he could feel, and often did +feel, as deep an interest in the work of another man as in his +own. There was no trouble he would not take to aid a friend +in gaining recognition. This it was more than anything else +which endeared him to all his friends, and made them condone +those faults of his which ever since his death have been so +freely discussed. The editor of this volume quotes this +sentence from Skelton’s ‘Table-Talk of +Shirley’:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“I have preserved a number of +Rossetti’s letters, and there is barely one, I think, which +is not mainly devoted to warm commendation of obscure poets and +painters—obscure at the time of writing, but of whom more +than one has since become famous.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Nor was his interest in other men’s work confined to +that of his personal friends. His discovery of +Browning’s ‘Pauline,’ of Charles Wells, and of +the poems of Ebenezer Jones may be cited as instances of +this. Moreover, he was always looking out in +magazines—some of them of the most obscure kind—for +good work. And if he was rewarded, as he sometimes was, by +coming upon precious things that might otherwise have been lost, +his heart was rejoiced.</p> +<p>One day, having turned into a coffee-house in Chancery Lane to +get a cup of coffee, he <!-- page 113--><a +name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>came upon a +number of <i>Reynolds’s Miscellany</i>, and finding there a +poem called ‘A Lover’s Pastime,’ he saw at once +its extraordinary beauty, and enclosed it in a letter to +Allingham. In this case, however, he unfortunately did not +make his usual efforts to discover the authorship of a poem that +pleased him; and a pity it is, for the poem is one of the +loveliest lyrics that have been written in modern times. We +hope it will find a place in the next anthology of lyrical +poetry.</p> +<p>Though his criticisms were not always sure and impeccable, he +was of all critics the most independent of authority. Had +he chanced to find in the poets’ corner of <i>The +Eatanswill Gazette</i> a lyric equal to the best of +Shelley’s, he would have recognized its merits at once and +proclaimed them; and had he come across a lyric of +Shelley’s that had received unmerited applause, he would +have recognized its demerits for himself, and proclaimed them +with equal candour and fearlessness.</p> +<p>Again, certain passages in these letters will surprise the +reader by throwing light upon a side of Rossetti’s life and +character which was only known to his intimate friends. +Recluse as Rossetti came to be, he knew more of “London +life” in the true sense of the word than did many of those +who were supposed to know it well—diners-out like Browning, +for instance, <!-- page 114--><a name="page114"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 114</span>and Richard Doyle. That the +author of ‘The House of Life’ knew London on the side +that Dickens knew it better than any other poet of his time will +no doubt surprise many a reader. His visits to +Jamrach’s mart for wild animals led him to explore the +wonderful world, that so few people ever dream of, which lies +around Ratcliffe Highway. He observed with the greatest +zest the movements of the East-End swarm. Moreover, his +passion for picking up “curios” and antique furniture +made him familiar with quarters of London that he would otherwise +have never known. And not Dickens himself had more of what +may be called the “Haroun al Raschid passion” for +wandering through a city’s streets at night. It was +this that kept him in touch on one side with men so unlike him as +Brough and Sala.</p> +<p>In this volume there is a charming anecdote of his generosity +to Brough’s family, and Sala always spoke of him as +“dear Dante Rossetti.” The transpontine +theatre, even the penny gaff of the New Cut, was not quite +unfamiliar with the face of the poet-painter. Hence no man +was a better judge than he of the low-life pictures of a writer +like F. W. Robinson, whose descriptions of the street arab in +‘Owen, a Waif,’ &c., he would read aloud with a +dramatic power astonishing to those who associated him +exclusively with Dante, Beatrice, and mystical passion.</p> +<p><!-- page 115--><a name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +115</span>Frequently in these letters an allusion will puzzle the +reader who does not know of Rossetti’s love of nocturnal +rambling, an allusion, however, which those who knew him will +fully understand. Here is a sentence of the +kind:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“As I haven’t been outside my door for +months in the daytime, I should not have had much opportunity of +enjoying pastime and pleasaunces.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The editor quotes some graphic and interesting words from Mr. +W. M. Rossetti which explain this passage.</p> +<p>In summer, as in winter, he rose very late in the day and made +a breakfast, as he used to say, which was to keep him in fuel for +something under twelve hours. He would then begin to paint, +and scarcely leave his work till the daylight waned. Then +he would dine, and afterwards start off for a walk through the +London streets, which to him, as he used to say, put on a magical +robe with the lighting of the gas lamps. After walking for +miles through the streets, either with a friend or alone, +loitering at the windows of such shops as still were open, he +would turn into an oyster shop or late restaurant for +supper. Here his frankness of bearing was quite +irresistible with strangers whenever it pleased him to approach +them, as he sometimes did. The most singular and bizarre +incidents of his life occurred to him on these +occasions—incidents which he would relate <!-- page +116--><a name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +116</span>with a dramatic power that set him at the head of the +<i>raconteurs</i> of his time. One of these +<i>rencontres</i> in the Haymarket was of a quite extraordinary +character.</p> +<p>In the latter years of his life, when he lived at Cheyne Walk, +he would often not begin his perambulations until an hour before +midnight. It will be a pity if some one who accompanied him +in his nocturnal rambles—the most remarkable man of our +time—does not furnish the world with reminiscences of +them.</p> +<p>Another point of interest upon which these letters will throw +light is that connected with his method of work. He +himself, like Tennyson, used to say that those who are the most +curious as to the way in which a poem was written are precisely +those who have the least appreciation of the beauties of the poem +itself. If this is true, the time in which we live is not +remarkable, perhaps, for its appreciation of poetry. These +letters, at any rate, will be appreciated, for the light that +some of them throw upon Rossetti at work is remarkable. +When a subject for a poem struck him, it was his way to make a +prose note of it, then to cartoon it, then to leave it for a +time, then to take it up again and read it to his friends, and +then to finish it. In a letter to Allingham, dated July +18th, 1854, enclosing the first form of the sonnet called +‘Lost on Both Sides’—which sonnet did not +appear in print till 1881—<!-- page 117--><a +name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>Rossetti +says: “My sonnets are not generally finished till I see +them again after forgetting them; and this is only two days +old. When between the first form of a sonnet and the second +an interval of twenty-seven years elapses, no student of poetry +can fail to compare one form with the other.</p> +<p>And so with regard to that poem which is, on the whole, +Rossetti’s masterpiece—‘Sister +Helen’—sent as early as 1854 to Mrs. Howitt for the +German publication the <i>Düsseldorf Annual</i>; the changes +in it are extremely interesting. Never did it appear in +print without suffering some important variation. +Sometimes, indeed, the change of a word or two in a line would +entirely transfigure the stanza. As to the new stanzas +added to the ballad just before Rossetti’s death, these +turned the ballad from a fine poem into a great one.</p> +<p>Equally striking are the changes in ‘The Blessed +Damosel.’ But the most notable example of the surety +of his hand in revising is seen in regard to a poem several times +mentioned in this volume, called originally ‘Bride’s +Chamber Talk.’ It was begun as early as +‘Jenny,’ read by Allingham in 1860, but not printed +till more than a quarter of a century later. The earliest +form is still in existence in MS., and although some of the lines +struck out are as poetry most lovely, the poem on the whole is +better without them. It was a theory <!-- page 118--><a +name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>of +Rossetti’s, indeed, that the very riches of the English +language made it necessary for the poet who would achieve +excellence to revise and manipulate his lines. And in +support of this he would contrast the amazing passion for +revision disclosed by Dr. Garnett’s ‘Relics of +Shelley,’ in which sometimes scarcely half a dozen of the +original words are left on a page, with Scott’s metrical +narratives, which were sent to the printer in cantos as they were +written, like one of the contemporary novels thrown off for the +serials. The fact seems to be, however, that the +poet’s power of reaching, as Scott reached, his own ideal +expression <i>per saltum</i>, or reaching it slowly and +tentatively, is simply a matter of temperament. For whose +verses are more loose-jointed than Byron’s? whose diction +is more commonplace than his? And yet this is what the +greatest of Byron specialists, Mr John Murray, says in his +extremely interesting remarks upon Byron’s +autograph:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“If we except Byron’s dramatic pieces +and ‘Don Juan,’ the first draft of Byron’s +longer poems formed but a nucleus of the work as it was +printed. For example, ‘English Bards and Scotch +Reviewers’ grew out of the ‘British Bards,’ +while ‘The Giaour,’ by constant additions to the +manuscript, the proofs, and even to the work after publication, +was expanded to nearly twice its original size. . . . When the +<!-- page 119--><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +119</span>inspiration was on him, the printer had to be kept at +work the greater part of the night, and fresh ‘copy’ +and fresh revises were crossing one another hour by +hour.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The conclusion is that poets cannot be classified according to +their methods of work, but only in relation to the result of +those methods, and that our two great elaborators, Byron and +Rossetti, may still be more unlike each other in essentials than +are any other two nineteenth-century poets.</p> +<p>On the whole, we cannot help closing this book with kindly +feelings towards the editor, inasmuch as it aids in the good work +of restoring the true portrait of the man who has suffered more +than any other from the mischievous malignity of foes and the +more mischievous indiscretion of certain of his friends.</p> +<h2><!-- page 120--><a name="page120"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 120</span>III. ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.<br +/> +1809–1892.</h2> +<h3>I.</h3> +<p>Charles Lamb was so paralyzed, it is said, by +Coleridge’s death, that for weeks after that event, he was +heard murmuring often to himself, “Coleridge is dead, +Coleridge is dead.” In such a mental condition at +this moment is an entire country, I think. “Tennyson +is dead! Tennyson is dead!” It will be some +time before England’s loss can really be expressed by any +words so powerful in pathos and in sorrow as these. And if +this is so with regard to English people generally, what of those +few who knew the man, and knowing him, must needs love +him—must needs love him above all others?—those, I +mean, who, when speaking of him, used to talk not so much about +the poetry as about the man who wrote it—those who now are +saying, with a tremor of the voice, and a moistening of the +eye:—</p> +<blockquote><p>There was none like him—none.</p> +</blockquote> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p120b.jpg"> +<img alt="Alfred, Lord Tennyson, æt. 80. From a +photography reproduced by the kind permission of Lord Tennyson" +src="images/p120s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>To say wherein lies the secret of the charm of anything that +lives is mostly difficult. Especially <!-- page 121--><a +name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 121</span>is it so +with regard to a man of poetic genius. All are agreed, for +instance, that D. G. Rossetti possessed an immense charm. +So he did, indeed. But who has been able to define that +charm? I, too, knew Rossetti well, and loved him +well. Sometimes, indeed, the egotism of a sorrowing memory +makes me think that outside his own most affectionate and +noble-tempered family, including that old friend in art at whose +feet he sat as a boy, no man loved Rossetti so deeply and so +lastingly as I did; unless, perhaps, it was the poor blind poet, +Philip Marston, who, being so deeply stricken, needed to love and +to be loved more sorely than I, to whom Fate has been kind. +And yet I should find it difficult to say wherein lay the charm +of Rossetti’s chameleon-like personality. So with +other men and women I could name. This is not so in regard +to the great man now lying dead at Aldworth. Nothing is +easier than to define the charm of Tennyson.</p> +<p>It lay in a great veracity of soul—in a +simple-mindedness so childlike that, unless you had known him to +be the undoubted author of his exquisitely artistic poems, you +would have supposed that even the subtleties of poetic art must +be foreign to a nature so devoid of all subtlety as his. +“Homer,” you would have said, “might have been +such a man as this, for Homer worked in a language which is +Poetry’s very voice. But Tennyson works in a language +<!-- page 122--><a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +122</span>which has to be moulded into harmony by a myriad +subtleties of art. How can this great inspired child, who +yet has the simple wisdom of Bragi, the poetry-smith of the +Northern Olympus, be the delicate-fingered artist of ‘The +Princess,’ ‘The Palace of Art,’ ‘The +Day-Dream,’ and ‘The Dream of Fair +Women’?”</p> +<p>As deeply as some men feel that language was given to men to +disguise their thoughts did Tennyson feel that language was given +to <i>him</i> to declare his thoughts without disguise. He +knew of but one justification for the thing he said, viz., that +it was the thing he thought. <i>Arrière +pensée</i> was with him impossible. But, it may be +asked, when a man carries out-speaking to such a pass as this, is +he not apt to become a somewhat troublesome and discordant thread +in the complex web of modern society? No doubt any other +man than Tennyson would have been so. But the honest ring +in the voice—which, by-the-by, was strengthened and +deepened by the old-fashioned Lincolnshire accent—softened +and, to a great degree, neutralized the effect of the +bluntness. Moreover, behind this uncompromising directness +was apparent a noble and a splendid courtesy; for, above all +things, Tennyson was a great and forthright English +gentleman. As he stood at the porch at Aldworth, meeting a +guest or bidding him good-bye—as he stood there, tall, far +beyond the height of average men, his naturally <!-- page +123--><a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +123</span>fair skin showing dark and tanned by the sun and +wind—as he stood there no one could mistake him for +anything but a great gentleman, who was also much more. Up +to the last a man of extraordinary presence, he showed, I think, +the beauty of old age to a degree rarely seen.</p> +<p>A friend of his who, visiting him on his birthday, discovered +him thus standing at the door to welcome him, has described his +unique appearance in words which are literally accurate at +least:—</p> +<blockquote><p>A poet should be limned in youth, they say,<br /> + Or else in prime, with eyes and forehead beaming<br +/> + Of manhood’s noon—the very body +seeming<br /> +To lend the spirit wings to win the bay;<br /> +But here stands he whose noontide blooms for aye,<br /> + Whose eyes, where past and future both are +gleaming<br /> + With lore beyond all youthful poets’ +dreaming,<br /> +Seem lit from shores of some far-glittering day.</p> +<p>Our master’s prime is now—is ever now;<br /> + Our star that wastes not in the wastes of night<br +/> + Holds Nature’s dower undimmed in Time’s +despite;<br /> +Those eyes seem Wisdom’s own beneath that brow,<br /> +Where every furrow Time hath dared to plough<br /> + Shines a new bar of still diviner light.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This, then, was the secret of Tennyson’s personal +charm. And if the reader is sceptical as to its magnetic +effect upon his friends, let me remind him of the amazing rarity +of these great and guileless natures; let me remind him also that +this world is comprised of two classes of people—the bores, +whose name is legion, and the interesting people, whose name is +<!-- page 124--><a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +124</span><i>not</i> legion—the former being those whose +natural instinct of self-protective mimicry impels them to move +about among their fellows hiding their features behind a mask of +convention, the latter being those who move about with uncovered +faces just as Nature fashioned them. If guilelessness lends +interest to a dullard, it is still more so with the really +luminous souls. So infinite is the creative power of nature +that she makes no two individuals alike. If we only had the +power of inquiring into the matter, we should find not only that +each individual creature that once inhabited one of the minute +shells that go to the building of England’s fortress walls +of chalk was absolutely unlike all the others, but that even the +poor microbe himself, who in these days is so maligned, is also +very intensely an individual.</p> +<p>Some time ago the old discussion was revived in <i>The +Athenæum</i> as to whether the nightingale’s song was +joyful or melancholy. And, perhaps, if the poems of the +late James Thomson and the poems of Mr. Austin Dobson were +recited by their authors to a congregation of nightingales, the +question would at once be debated amongst them, “Is the +note of the human songster joyful or melancholy?” The +truth is that the humidity or the dryness of the atmosphere in +the various habitats of the nightingale modifies so greatly the +<i>timbre</i> of the voice that, while a nightingale chorus at +Fiesole may seem joyous, <!-- page 125--><a +name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 125</span>a +nightingale chorus in the moist thickets along the banks of the +Ouse may seem melancholy. Nay, more, as I once told +Tennyson at Aldworth, I, when a truant boy wandering along the +banks of the Ouse (where six nightingales’ nests have been +found in the hedge of a single meadow), got so used to these +matters that I had my own favourite individuals, and could easily +distinguish one from another. That rich climacteric swell +which is reached just before the “jug, jug, jug,” +varies amazingly, if the listener will only give the matter +attention. And if this infinite variety of individualism is +thus seen in the lower animals, what must it be in man?</p> +<p>There is, however, in the entire human race, a fatal instinct +for marring itself. To break down the exterior signs of +this variety of individualism in the race by mutual imitation, by +all sorts of affectations, is the object not only of the +civilization of the Western world, but of the very negroes on the +Gaboon River. No wonder, then, that whensoever we meet, as +at rarest interval we do meet, an individual who is able to +preserve his personality as Nature meant it to live, we feel an +attraction towards him such as is irresistible. Now I would +challenge those who knew him to say whether they ever knew any +other man so free from this great human infirmity as +Tennyson. The way in which his simplicity of nature would +manifest <!-- page 126--><a name="page126"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 126</span>itself was, in some instances, most +remarkable. Though, of course, he had his share of that +egoism of the artist without which imaginative genius may become +sterile, it seemed impossible for him to realize what a +transcendent position he took among contemporary writers all over +the world. “Poets,” he once said to me, +“have not had the advantage of being <i>born</i> to the +purple.” Up to the last he felt himself to be a poet +at struggle more or less with the Wilsons and the Crokers who, in +his youth, assailed him. I, and a very dear friend of his, +a family connexion, tried in vain to make him see that when a +poet had reached a position such as he had won, no criticism +could injure him or benefit him one jot.</p> +<p>What has been called his exclusiveness is entirely +mythical. He was the most hospitable of men. It was +very rare, indeed, for him to part from a friend at his hall +door, or at the railway station without urging him to return as +soon as possible, and generally with the words, “Come +whenever you like.” The fact is, however, that for +many years the strangest notions seem to have got abroad as to +the claims of the public upon men of genius. There seems +now to be scarcely any one who does not look upon every man who +has passed into the purgatory of fame as his or her common +property. The unlucky victim is to be pestered by letters +upon every sort of foolish subject, and to be hunted <!-- page +127--><a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +127</span>down in his walks and insulted by senseless +adulation. Tennyson resented this, and so did Rossetti, and +so ought every man who has reached eminence and respects his own +genius. Neither fame nor life itself is worth having on +such terms as these.</p> +<p>One day, Tennyson when walking round his garden at +Farringford, saw perched up in the trees that surrounded it, two +men who had been refused admittance at the gate—two men +dressed like gentlemen. He very wisely gave the public to +understand that his fame was not to be taken as an abrogation of +his rights as a private English gentleman. For my part, +whenever I hear any one railing against a man of eminence with +whom he cannot possibly have been brought into contact, I know at +once what it means: the railer has been writing an idle letter to +the eminent one and received no reply.</p> +<p>Tennyson’s knowledge of nature—nature in every +aspect—was very great. His passion for +“star-gazing” has often been commented upon by +readers of his poetry. Since Dante no poet in any land has +so loved the stars. He had an equal delight in watching the +lightning; and I remember being at Aldworth once during a +thunderstorm, when I was alarmed at the temerity with which he +persisted, in spite of all remonstrances, in gazing at the +blinding lightning. For moonlight effects he had a passion +equally strong, and it is especially pathetic to <!-- page +128--><a name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +128</span>those who know this to remember that he passed away in +the light he so loved—in a room where there was no +artificial light—nothing to quicken the darkness but the +light of the full moon (which somehow seems to shine more +brightly at Aldworth than anywhere else in England); and that on +the face of the poet, as he passed away, fell that radiance in +which he so loved to bathe it when alive.</p> +<p>If it is as easy to describe the personal attraction of +Tennyson as it is difficult to describe that of any one of his +great contemporaries, we do not find the same relations existing +between him and them as regards his place in the firmament of +English poetry. In a country with a composite language such +as ours, it may be affirmed with special emphasis, that there are +two kinds of poetry; one appealing to the uncultivated masses, +whose vocabulary is of the narrowest; the other appealing to the +few who, partly by temperament, and partly by education, are +sensitive to the true beauties of poetic art. While in the +one case the appeal is made through a free and popular use of +words, partly commonplace and partly steeped in that literary +sentimentalism which in certain stages of an artificial society +takes the place of the simple utterances of simple passion of +earlier and simpler times; in the other case the appeal is made +very largely through what Dante calls the “use of the sieve +for noble words.”</p> +<p><!-- page 129--><a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +129</span>Of the one perhaps Byron is the type, the exemplars +being such poets as those of the Mrs. Hemans school in England, +and of the Longfellow school in America. Of the other class +of poets, the class typified by Milton, the most notable +exemplars are Keats, Shelley, and Coleridge. Wordsworth +partakes of the qualities of both classes. The methods of +the first of these two groups are so cheap—they are so +based on the wide severance between the popular taste and the +poetic temper (which, though in earlier times it inspired the +people, is now confined to the few)—that one may say of the +first group that their success in finding and holding an audience +is almost damnatory to them as poets. As compared with the +poets of Greece, however, both groups may be said to have secured +only a partial success in poetry; for not only Æschylus and +Sophocles, but Homer too, are as satisfying in the matter of +noble words as though they had never tried to win that popular +success which was their goal. In this respect—as +being, I mean, the compeer of the great poets of +Greece—Shakespeare takes his peculiar place in English +poetry. Of all poets he is the most popular, and yet in his +use of the “sieve for noble words” his skill +transcends that of even Milton, Coleridge, Shelley, and +Keats. His felicities of diction in the great passages seem +little short of miraculous, and they are so many that it is <!-- +page 130--><a name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +130</span>easy to understand why he is so often spoken of as +being a kind of inspired improvisatore. That he was +<i>not</i> an improvisatore, however, any one can see who will +take the trouble to compare the first edition of ‘Romeo and +Juliet’ with the received text, the first sketch of +‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ with the play as we now +have it, and the ‘Hamlet’ of 1603 with the +‘Hamlet’ of 1604, and with the still further varied +version of the play given by Heminge and Condell in the Folio of +1623. If we take into account, moreover, that it is only by +the lucky chapter of accidents that we now possess the earlier +forms of the three plays mentioned above, and that most likely +the other plays were once in a like condition, we shall come to +the conclusion that there was no more vigilant worker with +Dante’s sieve than Shakespeare. Next to Shakespeare +in this great power of combining the forces of the two great +classes of English poets, appealing both to the commonplace sense +of a commonplace public and to the artistic sense of the few, +stands, perhaps, Chaucer; but since Shakespeare’s time no +one has met with anything like Tennyson’s success in +effecting a reconciliation between popular and artistic sympathy +with poetry in England.</p> +<p>The biography of such a poet, one who has had such an immense +influence upon the literary history of the entire Victorian +epoch—<!-- page 131--><a name="page131"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 131</span>indeed, upon the nineteenth century, +for his work covers two-thirds of the century—will be a +work of incalculable importance. There is but one man who +is fully equipped for such an undertaking, and fortunately that +is his own son—a man of great ability, of admirable +critical acumen, and of quite exceptional accomplishments. +His son’s filial affection was so precious to Tennyson +that, although the poet’s powers remained undimmed to the +last day of his life, I do not believe that we should have had +all the splendid work of the last ten years without his +affectionate and unwearied aid.</p> +<h3><!-- page 132--><a name="page132"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 132</span>II.</h3> +<p>All emotion—that of communities as well as that of +individuals—is largely governed by the laws of ebb and +flow. It is immediately after a national mourning for the +loss of a great man that a wave of reaction generally sets +in. But the eagerness with which these volumes <a +name="citation132"></a><a href="#footnote132" +class="citation">[132]</a> have been awaited shows that +Tennyson’s hold upon the British public is as strong at +this moment as it was on the day of his death. This very +popularity of his, however, has sometimes been spoken of by +critics as though it were an impeachment of him as a poet. +“The English public is commonplace,” they say, +“and hence the commonplace in poetry suits it.” +And no doubt this is true as a general saying, otherwise what +would become of certain English poetasters who are such a joy to +the many and such a source of laughter to the few? But a +hardy critic would he be who should characterize Tennyson’s +poetry as commonplace—that very poetry which, before it +became popular, was decried because it was merely “poetry +for poets.” Still that poetry so rich and so rare as +his <!-- page 133--><a name="page133"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 133</span>should find its way to the heart of +a people like the English, who have “not sufficient poetic +instinct in them to give birth to vernacular poetry,” is +undoubtedly a striking fact. With regard to the mass of his +work, he belonged to those poets whose appeal is as much through +their mastery over the more subtle beauties of poetic art as +through the heat of the poetic fire; and such as these must +expect to share the fate of Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley. +Every true poet must have an individual accent of his +own—an accent which is, however, recognizable as another +variation of that large utterance of the early gods common to all +true poets in all tongues. Is it not, then, in the nature +of things that, in England at least, “the fit though +few” comprise the audience of such a poet until the voice +of recognized Authority proclaims him? But Authority moves +slowly in these matters; years have to pass before the music of +the new voice can wind its way through the convolutions of the +general ear—so many years, indeed, that unless the poet is +blessed with the sublime self-esteem of Wordsworth he generally +has to die in the belief that his is another name “written +in water.” And was it always so? Yes, +always.</p> +<p>England having, as we have said, no vernacular song, her +poetry is entirely artistic, even such poetry as ‘The May +Queen,’ ‘The Northern Farmer,’ and the idyls of +<!-- page 134--><a name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +134</span>William Barnes. And it would be strange indeed +if, until Authority spoke out, the beauties of artistic poetry +were ever apparent to the many. Is it supposable, for +instance, that even the voice of Chaucer—is it supposable +that even the voice of Shakspeare—would have succeeded in +winning the contemporary ear had it not been for that great mass +of legendary and romantic material which each of these found +ready to his hand, waiting to be moulded into poetic form? +The fate, however, of Moore’s poetical narratives (perhaps +we might say of Byron’s too) shows that if any poetry is to +last beyond the generation that produced it, there is needed not +only the romantic material, but also the accent, new and true, of +the old poetic voice. And these volumes show why in these +late days, when the poet’s inheritance of romantic material +seemed to have been exhausted, there appeared one poet to whom +the English public gave an acceptance as wide almost as if he had +written in the vernacular like Burns or Béranger.</p> +<p>It is long since any book has been so eagerly looked forward +to as this. The main facts of Tennyson’s life have +been matter of familiar knowledge for so many years that we do +not propose to run over them here once more. Nor shall we +fill the space at our command with the biographer’s +interesting personal anecdotes. So fierce a light had been +beating upon Aldworth <!-- page 135--><a name="page135"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 135</span>and Farringford that the relations +of the present Lord Tennyson to his father were pretty generally +known. In the story of English poetry these relations held +a place that was quite unique. What the biographer says +about the poet’s sagacity, judgment, and good +sense—especially what he says about his insight into the +characters of those with whom he was brought into +contact—will be challenged by no one who knew him. +Still, the fact remains that Tennyson’s temperament was +poetic entirely. And the more attention the poet pays to +his art, the more unfitted does he become to pay attention to +anything else. For in these days the mechanism of social +life moves on grating wheels that need no little oiling if the +poet is to bring out the very best that is within him. Not +that all poets are equally vexed by the special infirmity of the +poetic temperament. Poets like Wordsworth, for instance, +are supported against the world by love of Nature and by that +“divine arrogance” which is sometimes a +characteristic of genius. Tennyson’s case shows that +not even love of Nature and intimate communings with her are of +use in giving a man peace when he has not Wordsworth’s +temperament. No adverse criticism could disturb +Wordsworth’s sublime self-complacency.</p> +<p>“Your father,” writes Jowett, with his usual +wisdom, to Lord Tennyson, “was very sensitive, <!-- page +136--><a name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +136</span>and had an honest hatred of being gossiped about. +He called the malignant critics and chatterers +‘mosquitos.’ He never felt any pleasure at +praise (except from his friends), but he felt a great pain at the +injustice of censure. It never occurred to him that a new +poet in the days of his youth was sure to provoke dangerous +hostilities in the ‘genus irritabile vatum’ and in +the old-fashioned public.”</p> +<p>It might almost be said, indeed, that had it not been for the +ministrations, first of his beloved wife, and then of his sons, +Tennyson’s life would have been one long warfare between +the attitude of his splendid intellect towards the universe and +the response of his nervous system to human criticism. From +his very childhood he seems to have had that instinct for +confronting the universe as a whole which, except in the case of +Shakespeare, is not often seen among poets. Star-gazing and +speculation as to the meaning of the stars and what was going on +in them seem to have begun in his childhood. In his first +Cambridge letter to his aunt, Mrs. Russell, written from No. 12, +Rose Crescent, he says, “I am sitting owl-like and solitary +in my room, nothing between me and the stars but a stratum of +tiles.” And his son tells us of a story current in +the family that Frederick, when an Eton schoolboy, was shy of +going to a neighbouring dinner-party to which <!-- page 137--><a +name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 137</span>he had been +invited. “Fred,” said his younger brother, +“think of Herschel’s great star-patches, and you will +soon get over all that.” He had Wordsworth’s +passion, too, for communing with Nature alone. He was one +of Nature’s elect who knew that even the company of a dear +and intimate friend, howsoever close, is a disturbance of the +delight that intercourse with her can afford to the true +devotee. In a letter to his future wife, written from +Mablethorpe in 1839, he says:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“I am not so able as in old years to commune +<i>alone</i> with Nature . . . Dim mystic sympathies with tree +and hill reaching far back into childhood, a known landskip is to +me an old friend, that continually talks to me of my own youth +and half-forgotten things, and indeed does more for me than many +an old friend that I know. An old park is my delight, and I +could tumble about it for ever.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Moreover, he was always speculating upon the mystery and the +wonder of the human story. “The far future,” he +says in a letter to Miss Sellwood, written from High Beech in +Epping Forest, “has been my world always.” And +yet so powerless is reason in that dire wrestle with temperament +which most poets know, that with all these causes for despising +criticism of his work, Tennyson was as sensitive to critical +strictures as Wordsworth was indifferent. “He +fancied,” says his biographer, <!-- page 138--><a +name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>“that +England was an unsympathetic atmosphere, and half resolved to +live abroad in Jersey, in the South of France, or in Italy. +He was so far persuaded that the English people would never care +for his poetry, that, had it not been for the intervention of his +friends, he declared it not unlikely that after the death of +Hallam he would not have continued to write.” And +again, in reference to the completion of ‘The Sleeping +Beauty,’ his son says, “He warmed to his work because +there had been a favourable review of him lately published in +far-off Calcutta.”</p> +<p>We dwell upon this weakness of Tennyson’s—a +weakness which, in view of his immense powers, was certainly a +source of wonder to his friends—in order to show, once for +all, that without the tender care of his son he could never in +his later years have done the work he did. This it was +which caused the relations between Tennyson and the writer of +this admirable memoir to be those of brother with brother rather +than of father with son. And those who have been eagerly +looking forward to these volumes will not be disappointed. +In writing the life of any man there are scores and scores of +facts and documents, great and small, which only some person +closely acquainted with him, either as relative or as friend, can +bring into their true light; and this it is which makes documents +so deceptive. Here is an instance of what we mean. In +writing to Thompson, Spedding <!-- page 139--><a +name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>says of +Tennyson on a certain occasion: “I could not get Alfred to +Rydal Mount. He would and would not (sulky one!), although +Wordsworth was hospitably minded towards him.” This +remark would inevitably have been construed into another instance +of that churlishness which is so often said (though quite +erroneously) to have been one of Tennyson’s +infirmities. But when we read the following foot-note by +the biographer, “He said he did not wish to intrude himself +on the great man at Rydal,” we accept the incident as +another proof of that “humility” which the son +alludes to in his preface as being one of his father’s +characteristics. And of such evidence that had not the +poet’s son written his biography the loss to literature +would have been incalculable the book is full. Evidence of +a fine intellect, a fine culture, and a sure judgment is afforded +by every page—afforded as much by what is left unsaid as by +what is said.</p> +<p>The biographer has invited a few of the poet’s friends +to furnish their impressions of him. These could not fail +to be interesting; it is pleasant to know what impression +Tennyson made upon men of such diverse characters as the Duke of +Argyll, Jowett, Tyndall, Froude, and others. But so far as +a vital portrait of the man is concerned they were not needed, so +vigorously does the man live in the portrait painted by him who +knew the poet best of all.</p> +<p><!-- page 140--><a name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +140</span>“For my own part,” says the biographer, +“I feel strongly that no biographer could so truly give him +as he gives himself in his own works; but this may be because, +having lived my life with him, I see him in every word which he +has written; and it is difficult for me so far to detach myself +from the home circle as to pourtray him for others. There +is also the impossibility of fathoming a great man’s mind; +his deeper thoughts are hardly ever revealed. He himself +disliked the notion of a long, formal biography, for</p> +<blockquote><p>None can truly write his single day,<br /> +And none can write it for him upon earth.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“However, he wished that, if I deemed it better, the +incidents of his life should be given as shortly as might be +without comment, but that my notes should be final and full +enough to preclude the chance of further and unauthentic +biographies.</p> +<p>“For those who cared to know about his literary history +he wrote ‘Merlin and the Gleam.’ From his +boyhood he had felt the magic of Merlin—that spirit of +poetry—which bade him know his power and follow throughout +his work a pure and high ideal, with a simple and single +devotedness and a desire to ennoble the life of the world, and +which helped him through doubts and difficulties to ‘endure +as seeing Him who is invisible.’</p> +<blockquote><p>Great the Master,<br /> +And sweet the Magic,<br /> +When over the valley,<br /> +In early summers,<br /> +<!-- page 141--><a name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +141</span>Over the mountain,<br /> +On human faces,<br /> +And all around me,<br /> +Moving to melody,<br /> +Floated the Gleam.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“In his youth he sang of the brook flowing through his +upland valley, of the ‘ridged wolds’ that rose above +his home, of the mountain-glen and snowy summits of his early +dreams, and of the beings, heroes and fairies, with which his +imaginary world was peopled. Then was heard the +‘croak of the raven,’ the harsh voice of those who +were unsympathetic—</p> +<blockquote><p>The light retreated,<br /> +The Landskip darken’d,<br /> +The melody deaden’d,<br /> +The Master whisper’d,<br /> +‘Follow the Gleam.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“Still the inward voice told him not to be faint-hearted +but to follow his ideal. And by the delight in his own +romantic fancy, and by the harmonies of nature, ‘the warble +of water,’ and ‘cataract music of falling +torrents,’ the inspiration of the poet was renewed. +His Eclogues and English Idyls followed, when he sang the songs +of country life and the joys and griefs of country folk, which he +knew through and through,</p> +<blockquote><p>Innocent maidens,<br /> +Garrulous children,<br /> +Homestead and harvest,<br /> +Reaper and gleaner,<br /> +And rough-ruddy faces<br /> +Of lowly labour.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“By degrees, having learnt somewhat of the real +philosophy of life and of humanity from his own experience, he +rose to a melody ‘stronger <!-- page 142--><a +name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 142</span>and +statelier.’ He celebrated the glory of ‘human +love and of human heroism’ and of human thought, and began +what he had already devised, his epic of King Arthur, +‘typifying above all things the life of man,’ wherein +he had intended to represent some of the great religions of the +world. He had purposed that this was to be the chief work +of his manhood. Yet the death of his friend, Arthur Hallam, +and the consequent darkening of the whole world for him made him +almost fail in this purpose; nor any longer for a while did he +rejoice in the splendour of his spiritual visions, nor in the +Gleam that had ‘waned to a wintry glimmer.’</p> +<blockquote><p>Clouds and darkness<br /> +Closed upon Camelot;<br /> +Arthur had vanish’d<br /> +I knew not whither,<br /> +The King who loved me,<br /> +And cannot die.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“Here my father united the two Arthurs, the Arthur of +the Idylls and the Arthur ‘the man he held as half +divine.’ He himself had fought with death, and had +come out victorious to find ‘a stronger faith his +own,’ and a hope for himself, for all those in sorrow and +for universal human kind, that never forsook him through the +future years.</p> +<blockquote><p>And broader and brighter<br /> +The Gleam flying onward,<br /> +Wed to the melody,<br /> +Sang thro’ the world.</p> +<p>* * *</p> +<p>I saw, wherever<br /> +In passing it glanced upon<br /> +Hamlet or city,<br /> +That under the Crosses<br /> +<!-- page 143--><a name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +143</span>The dead man’s garden,<br /> +The mortal hillock,<br /> +Would break into blossom;<br /> +And so to the land’s<br /> +Last limit I came.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“Up to the end he faced death with the same earnest and +unfailing courage that he had always shown, but with an added +sense of the awe and the mystery of the Infinite.</p> +<blockquote><p>I can no longer,<br /> +But die rejoicing,<br /> +For thro’ the Magic<br /> +Of Him the Mighty,<br /> +Who taught me in childhood,<br /> +There on the border<br /> +Of boundless Ocean,<br /> +And all but in Heaven<br /> +Hovers the Gleam.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“That is the reading of the poet’s riddle as he +gave it to me. He thought that ‘Merlin and the +Gleam’ would probably be enough of biography for those +friends who urged him to write about himself. However, this +has not been their verdict, and I have tried to do what he said +that I might do.”</p> +<p>There are many specialists in Tennysonian bibliography who +take a pride (and a worthy pride) in their knowledge of the +master’s poems. But the knowledge of all of these +specialists put together is not equal to that of him who writes +this book. Not only is every line at his fingers’ +ends, but he knows, either from his own memory or from what his +father has told him, where and when and why every line was +written. He, however, shares, it is evident that +dislike—<!-- page 144--><a name="page144"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 144</span>rather let us say that passionate +hatred—which his father, like so many other poets, had of +that well-intentioned but vexing being whom Rossetti +anathematized as the “literary resurrection +man.” Rossetti used to say that “of all signs +that a man was devoid of poetic instinct and poetic feeling the +impulse of the literary resurrectionist was the +surest.” Without going so far as this we may at least +affirm that all poets writing in a language requiring, as English +does, much manipulation before it can be moulded into perfect +form must needs revise in the brain before the line is set down, +or in manuscript, as Shelley did, or partly in manuscript and +partly in type, as Coleridge did. But the rakers-up of the +“chips of the workshop,” to use Tennyson’s own +phrase, seem to have been specially irritating to him, because he +belonged to those poets who cannot really revise and complete +their work till they see it in type. “Poetry,” +he said, “looks better, more convincing in +print.”</p> +<p>“From the volume of 1832,” says his son, “he +omitted several stanzas of ‘The Palace of Art’ +because he thought that the poem was too full. ‘The +artist is known by his self-limitation’ was a favourite +adage of his. He allowed me, however, to print some of them +in my notes, otherwise I should have hesitated to quote without +his leave lines that he had excised. He ‘gave the +people of his best,’ and <!-- page 145--><a +name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 145</span>he usually +wished that his best should remain without variorum readings, +‘the chips of the workshop,’ as he called them. +The love of bibliomaniacs for first editions filled him with +horror, for the first editions are obviously in many cases the +worst editions, and once he said to me: ‘Why do they +treasure the rubbish I shot from my full-finish’d +cantos?’</p> +<blockquote><p>νηπιοι +ουδε +ισασιν οσω +πλέον ημισυ +παντος.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>For himself many passages in Wordsworth and other poets have +been entirely spoilt by the modern habit of giving every various +reading along with the text. Besides, in his case, very +often what is published as the latest edition has been the +original version in his first manuscript, so that there is no +possibility of really tracing the history of what may seem to be +a new word or a new passage. ‘For instance,’ he +said, ‘in “Maud” a line in the first edition +was ‘I will bury myself in <i>my books</i>, and the Devil +may pipe to his own,’ which was afterwards altered to +‘I will bury myself <i>in myself</i>, &c.’: this +was highly commended by the critics as an improvement on the +<i>original</i> reading—but it was actually in the first +MS. draft of the poem.”</p> +<p>Again, it is important to get a statement by one entitled to +speak with authority as to what Tennyson did and what he did not +believe upon religious matters. He had in ‘In +Memoriam’ and other poems touched with a hand so <!-- page +146--><a name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +146</span>strong and sometimes so daring upon the teaching of +modern science, and yet he had spoken always so reverently of +what modern civilization reverences, that the most opposite +lessons were read from his utterances. To one thinker it +would seem that Tennyson had thrown himself boldly upon the very +foremost wave of scientific thought. To another it would +seem that Wordsworth (although, living and writing when he did, +before the birth of the new cosmogony, he believed himself to be +still in trammels of the old) was by temperament far more in +touch with the new cosmogony than was Tennyson, who studied +evolution more ardently than any poet since Lucretius. +While Wordsworth, notwithstanding a conventional phrase here and +there, had an apprehension of Nature without the ever-present +idea of the Power behind her, Spinosa himself was not so +“God-intoxicated” a man as Tennyson. His son +sets the question at rest in the following pregnant +words:—</p> +<p>“Assuredly Religion was no nebulous abstraction for +him. He consistently emphasized his own belief in what he +called the Eternal Truths; in an Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and +All-loving God, Who has revealed Himself through the human +attribute of the highest self-sacrificing love; in the freedom of +the human will; and in the immortality of the soul. But he +asserted that ‘Nothing worthy proving can be proven,’ +and that even as to the great laws which are the basis of +Science, ‘We have <!-- page 147--><a +name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 147</span>but faith, +we cannot know.’ He dreaded the dogmatism of sects +and rash definitions of God. ‘I dare hardly name His +Name,’ he would say, and accordingly he named Him in +‘The Ancient Sage’ the ‘Nameless.’ +‘But take away belief in the self-conscious personality of +God,’ he said, ‘and you take away the backbone of the +world.’ ‘On God and God-like men we build our +trust.’ A week before his death I was sitting by him, +and he talked long of the Personality and of the Love of God, +‘That God, Whose eyes consider the poor,’ ‘Who +catereth, even for the sparrow.’ ‘I +should,’ he said, ‘infinitely rather feel myself the +most miserable wretch on the face of the earth with a God above, +than the highest type of man standing alone.’ He +would allow that God is unknowable in ‘his whole +world-self, and all-in-all,’ and that, therefore, there was +some force in the objection made by some people to the word +‘Personality’ as being ‘anthropomorphic,’ +and that, perhaps ‘Self-consciousness’ or +‘Mind’ might be clearer to them: but at the same time +he insisted that, although ‘man is like a thing of +nought’ in ‘the boundless plan,’ our highest +view of God must be more or less anthropomorphic: and that +‘Personality,’ as far as our intelligence goes, is +the widest definition and includes ‘Mind,’ +‘Self-consciousness,’ ‘Will,’ +‘Love,’ and other attributes of the Real, the +Supreme, ‘the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity, +Whose name is Holy.’”</p> +<p>And then Lord Tennyson quotes a manuscript note of +Jowett’s in which he says:—</p> +<p>“Alfred Tennyson thinks it ridiculous to <!-- page +148--><a name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +148</span>believe in a God and deny his consciousness, and was +amused at some one who said of him that he had versified +Hegelianism.”</p> +<p>He notes also an anecdote of Edward Fitzgerald’s which +speaks of a week with Tennyson, when the poet, picking up a +daisy, and looking closely at its crimson-tipped leaves, said, +“Does not this look like a thinking Artificer, one who +wishes to ornament?”</p> +<p>Here is a paragraph which will be read with the deepest +interest, not only by every lover of poetry, but by every man +whose heart has been rung by the most terrible of all +bereavements—the loss of a beloved friend. Close as +the tie of blood relationship undoubtedly is, it is based upon +convention as much as upon nature. It may exist and +flourish vigorously when there is little or no community of taste +or of thought:—</p> +<p>“It may be as well to say here that all the letters from +my father to Arthur Hallam were destroyed by his father after +Arthur’s death: a great loss, as these particular letters +probably revealed his inner self more truly than anything outside +his poems.”</p> +<p>We confess to belonging to those who always read with a twinge +of remorse the private letters of a man in print. But if +there is a case where one must needs long to see the letters +between two intimate friends, it is that of Tennyson and Arthur +Hallam. They would have been only second in interest to +Shakespeare’s <!-- page 149--><a name="page149"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 149</span>letters to that mysterious +“Mr. W. H.” whose identity now can never be +traced. For, notwithstanding all that has recently been +said, and ably said, to the contrary, the man to whom many of the +sonnets were addressed was he whom “T. T.” addresses +as “Mr. W. H.”</p> +<p>But for an intimacy to be so strong as that which existed +between Tennyson and Arthur H. Hallam there must be a kinship of +soul so close and so rare that the tie of blood relationship +seems weak beside it. It is then that friendship may +sometimes pass from a sentiment into a passion. It did so +in the case of Shakespeare and his mysterious friend, as the +sonnets in question make manifest; but we are not aware that +there is in English literature any other instance of friendship +as a passion until we get to ‘In Memoriam.’ So +profound was the effect of Hallam’s death upon Tennyson +that it was the origin, his son tells us, of ‘The Two +Voices; or, Thoughts of a Suicide.’ What was the +secret of Hallam’s influence over Tennyson can never be +guessed from anything that he has left behind either in prose or +verse. But besides the creative genius of the artist there +is that genius of personality which is irresistible. With a +very large gift of this kind of genius Arthur Hallam seems to +have been endowed.</p> +<p>“In the letters from Arthur Hallam’s +friends,” says Lord Tennyson, “there was a rare +unanimity <!-- page 150--><a name="page150"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 150</span>of opinion about his worth. +Milnes, writing to his father, says that he had a ‘very +deep respect’ for Hallam, and that Thirlwall, in after +years the great bishop, for whom Hallam and my father had a +profound affection, was ‘actually captivated by +him.’ When at Cambridge with Hallam he had written: +‘He is the only man here of my own standing before whom I +bow in conscious inferiority in everything.’ Alford +writes: ‘Hallam was a man of wonderful mind and knowledge +on all subjects, hardly credible at his age. . . . I long +ago set him down for the most wonderful person I ever knew. +He was of the most tender, affectionate +disposition.’”</p> +<p>Lord Tennyson’s remarks upon the ‘Idylls of the +King,’ and upon the enormous success of the book have a +special interest, and serve to illustrate our opening remarks +upon the popularity of his father’s works. Popular as +Tennyson had become through ‘The Gardener’s +Daughter,’ ‘The Miller’s Daughter,’ +‘The May Queen,’ ‘The Lord of Burleigh,’ +and scores of other poems—endeared to every sorrowing heart +as he had become through ‘In Memoriam’—it was +the ‘Idylls of the King’ that secured for him his +unique place. Many explanations of the phenomenon of a true +poet securing the popular suffrages have been offered, one of +them being his acceptance of the Laureateship. But +Wordsworth, a great <!-- page 151--><a name="page151"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 151</span>poet, also accepted it; and he never +was and never will be popular. The wisdom of what Goethe +says about the enormous importance of “subject” in +poetic art is illustrated by the story of Tennyson and the +‘Idylls of the King.’</p> +<p>For what was there in the ‘Idylls of the King’ +that brought all England to Tennyson’s feet—made +English people re-read with a new seeing in their eyes the poems +which they once thought merely beautiful, but now thought half +divine? Beautiful these ‘Idylls’ are indeed, +but they are not more beautiful than work of his that went +before. The rich Klondyke of Malory and Geoffrey of +Monmouth had not escaped the eyes of previous prospectors. +All his life Milton had dreamed of the mines lying concealed in +the “misty mid-region” of King Arthur and the Round +Table, but, luckily for Tennyson, was led away from it into other +paths. With Milton’s immense power of sensuous +expression—a power that impelled him, even when dealing +with the spirit world, to flash upon our senses pictures of the +very limbs of angels and fiends at fight—we may imagine +what an epic of King Arthur he would have produced. Dryden +also contemplated working in this mine, but never did; and until +Scott came with his Lyulph’s Tale in ‘The Bridal of +Triermain,’ no one had taken up the subject but writers +like Blackmore. Then came Bulwer’s <!-- page 152--><a +name="page152"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +152</span>burlesque. Now no prospector on the banks of the +Yukon has a keener eye for nuggets than Tennyson had for poetic +ore, and besides ‘The Lady of Shalott’ and +‘Launcelot and Guinevere,’ he had already printed the +grandest of all his poems—the ‘Morte +d’Arthur.’ It needed only the ‘Idylls of +the King,’ where episode after episode of the Arthurian +cycle was rendered in poems which could be understood by +all—it needed only this for all England to be set reading +and re-reading all his poems, some of them more precious than any +of these ‘Idylls’—poems whose familiar beauties +shone out now with a new light.</p> +<p>Ever since then Tennyson’s hold upon the British public +seemed to grow stronger and stronger up to the day of his death, +when Great Britain, and, indeed, the entire English-speaking +race, went into mourning for him; nor, as we have said, has any +weakening of that hold been perceptible during the five years +that have elapsed since.</p> +<p>The volumes are so crammed with interesting and important +matter that to discuss them in one article is impossible. +But before concluding these remarks we must say that the good +fortune which attended Tennyson during his life did not end with +his death. Fortunate, indeed, is the famous man who escapes +the catchpenny biographer. No man so illustrious as +Tennyson ever before passed away without his death <!-- page +153--><a name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +153</span>giving rise to a flood of books professing to tell the +story of his life. Yet it chanced that for a long time +before his death a monograph on Tennyson by Mr. Arthur +Waugh—which, though of course it is sometimes at fault, was +carefully prepared and well considered—had been in +preparation, as had also a second edition of another sketch of +the poet’s life by Mr. Henry Jennings, written with equal +reticence and judgment. These two books, coming out, as far +as we remember, in the very week of Tennyson’s funeral, did +the good service of filling up the gap of five years until the +appearance of this authorized biography by his son. +Otherwise there is no knowing what pseudo-biographies stuffed +with what errors and nonsense might have flooded the market and +vexed the souls of Tennysonian students. For the future +such pseudo-biographies will be impossible.</p> +<h3><!-- page 154--><a name="page154"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 154</span>III.</h3> +<p>Notwithstanding the apparently fortunate circumstances by +which Tennyson was surrounded, the record of his early life +produces in the reader’s mind a sense of unhappiness. +Happiness is an affair of temperament, not of outward +circumstances. Happy, in the sense of enjoying the present +as Wordsworth enjoyed it, Tennyson could never be. Once, no +doubt, Nature’s sweetest gift to all living +things—the power of enjoying the present—was +man’s inheritance too. Some of the human family have +not lost it even yet; but poets are rarely of these. Give +Wordsworth any pittance, enough to satisfy the simplest physical +wants—enough to procure him plain living and leisure for +“high thinking”—and he would be happier than +Tennyson would have been, cracking the finest +“walnuts” and sipping the richest “wine” +amidst a circle of admiring and powerful friends. As to +opinion, as to criticism of his work—what was that to +Wordsworth? Had he not from the first the good opinion of +her of whom he was the high priest elect. Natura Benigna +herself? Nay, had he not from the first the good opinions +of Wordsworth himself and Dorothy? Without this faculty of +enjoying the <!-- page 155--><a name="page155"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 155</span>present, how can a bard be +happy? For the present alone exists. The past is a +dream; the future is a dream; the present is the narrow plank +thrown for an instant from the dream of the past to the dream of +the future. And yet it is the poet (who of all men should +enjoy the raree show hurrying and scrambling along the +plank)—it is he who refuses to enjoy himself on his own +trembling little plank in order to “stare round” from +side to side.</p> +<p>Spedding, speaking in a letter to Thompson in 1835 of +Tennyson’s visit to the Lake country, lets fall a few words +that describe the poet in the period before his marriage more +fully than could have been done by a volume of subtle +analysis:—</p> +<p>“I think he took in more pleasure and inspiration than +any one would have supposed who did not know his own almost +personal dislike of the present, whatever it might be.”</p> +<p>This is what makes us say that by far the most important thing +in Tennyson’s life was his marriage. He began to +enjoy the present: “The peace of God came into my life +before the altar when I wedded her.” No more +beautiful words than these were ever uttered by any man +concerning any woman. And to say that the words were +Tennyson’s is to say that they expressed the simple truth, +for his definition of human speech as God meant it to be would +have been “the breath that utters truth.” It +would <!-- page 156--><a name="page156"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 156</span>have been wonderful, indeed, if he, +whose capacity of loving a friend was so great had been without +an equal capacity of loving a woman.</p> +<p>“Although as a son,” says the biographer, “I +cannot allow myself full utterance about her whom I loved as +perfect mother and ‘very woman of very +woman’—‘such a wife’ and true helpmate +she proved herself. It was she who became my father’s +adviser in literary matters; ‘I am proud of her +intellect,’ he wrote. With her he always discussed +what he was working at; she transcribed his poems: to her and to +no one else he referred for a final criticism before +publishing. She, with her ‘tender, spiritual +nature,’ <a name="citation156"></a><a href="#footnote156" +class="citation">[156]</a> and instinctive nobility of thought, +was always by his side, a ready, cheerful, courageous, wise, and +sympathetic counsellor. It was she who shielded his +sensitive spirit from the annoyances and trials of life, +answering (for example) the innumerable letters addressed to him +from all parts of the world. By her quiet sense of humour, +by her selfless devotion, by ‘her faith as clear as the +heights of the June-blue heaven,’ she helped him also to +the utmost in the hours of his depression and of his +sorrow.”</p> +<p>There are some few people whose natures are so noble or so +sweet that how rich soever may be their endowment of intellect, +or even of genius, we seem to remember them mainly <!-- page +157--><a name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 157</span>by +what St. Gregory Nazianzen calls “the rhetoric of their +lives.” And surely the knowledge that this is so is +encouraging to him who would fain believe in the high destiny of +man—surely it is encouraging to know that, in spite of +“the inhuman dearth of noble natures,” mankind can +still so dearly love moral beauty as to hold it more precious +than any other human force. And certainly one of those +whose intellectual endowments are outdazzled by the beauty of +their qualities of heart and soul was the sweet lady whose death +I am recording.</p> +<p>Among those who had the privilege of knowing Lady Tennyson +(and they were many, and these many were of the best), some are +at this moment eloquent in talk about the perfect helpmate she +was to the great poet, and the perfect mother she was to his +children, and they quote those lovely lines of Tennyson which +every one knows by heart:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Dear, near and true—no truer Time himself<br +/> +Can prove you, tho’ he make you evermore<br /> +Dearer and nearer, as the rapid of life<br /> +Shoots to the fall—take this and pray that he<br /> +Who wrote it, honouring your sweet faith to him,<br /> +May trust himself;—and after praise and scorn,<br /> +As one who feels the immeasurable world,<br /> +Attain the wise indifference of the wise;<br /> +And after autumn past—if left to pass<br /> +His autumn into seeming leafless days—<br /> +Draw toward the long frost and longest night,<br /> +Wearing his wisdom lightly, like the fruit<br /> +Which in our winter woodland looks a flower.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 158--><a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +158</span>Others dwell on the unique way in which those wistful +blue eyes of hers and that beautiful face expressed the +“tender spiritual nature” described by the +poet—expressed it, indeed, more and more eloquently with +the passage of years, and the bereavements the years had +brought. The present writer saw her within a few days of +her death. She did not seem to him then more fragile than +ordinary. For many years she whose fragile frame seemed to +be kept alive by the love and sweet movements of the soul within +had seemed as she lay upon her couch the same as she seemed when +death was so near—intensely pale, save when a flush as +slight as the pink on a wild rose told her watchful son that the +subject of conversation was interesting her more than was well +for her. As a matter of fact, however, Lady Tennyson was no +less remarkable as an intelligence than as the central heart of +love and light that illumined one of the most beautiful +households of our time.</p> +<p>Though her special gift was no doubt music, she had, as +Tennyson would say with affectionate pride, a “real insight +into poetical effects”; and those who knew her best shared +his opinion in this matter. Whether, had her life not been +devoted so entirely to others, she would have been a noticeable +artistic producer it is hard to guess. But there is no +doubt that she was born to hold a high place as a +conversationalist, <!-- page 159--><a name="page159"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 159</span>brilliant and stimulating. +Notwithstanding the jealous watchfulness of her family lest the +dinner talk should draw too heavily upon her small stock of +physical power, the fascination of her conversation, both as to +subject-matter and manner, was so irresistible that her friends +were apt to forget how fragile she really was until warned by a +sign from her son or, daughter-in-law, who adored her, that the +conversation should be brought to a close.</p> +<p>Her diary, upon which her son has drawn for certain +biographical portions of his book shows how keen and how +persistent was her interest in the poetry of her husband; it also +shows how thorough was her insight into its principles. As +a rule, diaries, professing as they do to give portraitures of +eminent men, are mostly very much worse than worthless. The +points seized upon by the diarist are almost never physiognomic, +and even if the diarist does give some glimpse of the character +he professes to limn, the picture can only be partially true, +inasmuch as it can never be toned down by other aspects of the +character unseen by the diarist and unknown to him.</p> +<p>Very different, however, is the record kept by Lady +Tennyson. As an instance of her power of selecting really +luminous points for preservation in her diary, let me instance +this. Many a student of the ‘Idylls of the +King’ has been struck by a certain difference in the style +<!-- page 160--><a name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +160</span>between ‘The Coming of Arthur’ and +‘The Passing of Arthur’ and the other idylls. +Indeed, more than once this difference has been cited as showing +Tennyson’s inability to fuse the different portions of a +long poem. This fact had not escaped the eye of the loving +wife and critic, and two days before her death she said to her +son, “He said ‘The Coming of Arthur’ and +‘The Passing of Arthur’ are purposely simpler in +style than the other idylls as dealing with the awfulness of +birth and death,” and wished this remark of the +poet’s to be put on record in the book.</p> +<p>It is needless to comment on the value of these few words and +the light they shed upon Tennyson’s method.</p> +<p>Those who saw Lady Tennyson in middle life and in advanced +age, and were struck by that spiritual beauty of hers which no +painter could ever render, will not find it difficult to imagine +what she was at seventeen, when Tennyson suddenly came upon her +in the “Fairy Wood,” and exclaimed, “Are you an +Oread or a Dryad wandering here?” And yet her beauty +was only a small part of a charm that was indescribable. An +important event for English literature was that meeting in the +“Fairy Wood.” For, from the moment of his +engagement, “the current of his mind was no longer and +constantly in the channel of mournful memories and melancholy +forebodings,” <!-- page 161--><a name="page161"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 161</span>says his son. And speaking of +the year, 1838, the son tells us that, on the whole, he was happy +in his life. “When I wrote ‘The Two +Voices,’” he used to say, “I was so utterly +miserable, a burden to myself and my family, that I said, +‘Is life worth anything?’ and now that I am old, I +fear that I shall only live a year or two, for I have work still +to do.”</p> +<p>The hostile manner in which ‘Maud’ was received +vexed him, and would, before his marriage, have deeply disturbed +him. A right view of this fine poem seems to have been +taken by George Brimley, an admirable critic, who in the +‘Cambridge Essays,’ had already pointed out with +great acumen many of the more subtle beauties of Tennyson.</p> +<p>There are few more pleasant pages in this book than those +which record Tennyson’s relations with another poet who was +blessed in his wife—Browning. Although the two poets +had previously met (notably in Paris in 1851), the intimacy +between them would seem to have been cemented, if not begun, +during one of Tennyson’s visits to his and Browning’s +friends, Mr. and Mrs. Knowles at the Hollies, Clapham +Common. Here Tennyson read to Browning the +‘Grail’ (which the latter pronounced to be +Tennyson’s “best and highest”); and here +Browning came and read his own new poem ‘The Ring and the +Book,’ when Tennyson’s verdict on it was, “Full +of strange vigour and <!-- page 162--><a name="page162"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 162</span>remarkable in many ways, doubtful if +it will ever be popular.”</p> +<p>The record of his long intimacy with Coventry Patmore and +Aubrey de Vere takes an important place in the biography, and the +reminiscences of Tennyson by the latter poet form an interesting +feature of the volumes. In George Meredith’s first +little book Tennyson was delighted by the ‘Love in a +Valley,’ and he had a full appreciation of the great +novelist all round. With the three leading poets of a +younger generation, Rossetti, William Morris, and Swinburne, he +had slight acquaintance. Here, however, is an interesting +memorandum by Tennyson recording his first meeting with +Swinburne:</p> +<p>“I may tell you, however, that young Swinburne called +here the other day with a college friend of his, and we asked him +to dinner, and I thought him a very modest and intelligent young +fellow. Moreover I read him what you vindicated +[‘Maud’], but what I particularly admired in him was +that he did not press upon me any verses of his own.”</p> +<p>Of contemporary novels he seems to have been a voracious and +indiscriminate reader. In the long list here given of +novelists whose books he read—good, bad, and +indifferent—it is curious not to find the name of Mrs. +Humphry Ward. With Thackeray he was intimate; and he was in +cordial relations with Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, and George +Eliot. Among <!-- page 163--><a name="page163"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 163</span>the poets, besides Edward Fitzgerald +and Coventry Patmore, he saw much of William Allingham. +Though he admired parts of ‘<i>Festus</i>’ greatly, +we do not gather from these volumes that he met the author. +Dobell he saw much of at Malvern in 1846. The letter-diary +from Tennyson during his stay in Cornwall with Holman Hunt, Val. +Prinsep, Woolner, and Palgrave, shows how exhilarated he could be +by wind and sea. The death of Lionel was a sad blow to +him. ‘Demeter, and other Poems,’ was dedicated +to Lord Dufferin, “as a tribute,” says his son, +“of affection and of gratitude; for words would fail me to +tell the unremitting kindness shown by himself and Lady Dufferin +to my brother Lionel during his fatal illness.”</p> +<p>Tennyson’s critical insight could not fail to be good +when exercised upon poetry. Here are one or two of his +sayings about Burns, which show in what spirit he would have read +Henley’s recent utterances about that poet:—</p> +<p>“Burns did for the old songs of Scotland almost what +Shakespeare had done for the English drama that preceded +him.”</p> +<p>“Read the exquisite songs of Burns. In shape each +of them has the perfection of the berry, in light the radiance of +the dew-drop: you forget for its sake those stupid things his +serious poems.”</p> +<p>Among the reminiscences and impressions <!-- page 164--><a +name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 164</span>of the poet +which Lord Tennyson has appended to his second volume, it is only +fair to specialize the admirable paper by F. T. Palgrave, which, +long as it is, is not by one word too long. That Jowett +would write wisely and well was in the nature of things. +The only contribution, however, we can quote here is +Froude’s, for it is as brief as it is emphatic:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“I owe to your father the first serious +reflexions upon life and the nature of it which have followed me +for more than fifty years. The same voice speaks to me now +as I come near my own end, from beyond the bar. Of the +early poems, ‘Love and Death’ had the deepest effect +upon me. The same thought is in the last lines of the last +poems which we shall ever have from him.</p> +<p>“Your father in my estimate, stands, and will stand far +away by the side of Shakespeare above all other English Poets, +with this relative superiority even to Shakespeare, that he +speaks the thoughts and speaks <i>to</i> the perplexities and +misgivings of his own age.</p> +<p>“He was born at the fit time, before the world had grown +inflated with the vanity of Progress, and there was still an +atmosphere in which such a soul could grow. There will be +no such others for many a long age.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">“Yours gratefully,<br /> +“<span class="smcap">J. A. Froude</span>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This letter is striking evidence of the influence Tennyson had +upon his contemporaries. Comparisons, however, between +Shakespeare <!-- page 165--><a name="page165"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 165</span>and other poets can hardly be +satisfactory. A kinship between him and any other poet can +only be discovered in relation to one of the many sides of the +“myriad-minded” man. Where lies +Tennyson’s kinship? Is it on the dramatic side? +In a certain sense Tennyson possessed dramatic power undoubtedly; +for he had a fine imagination of extraordinary vividness, and +could, as in ‘Rizpah,’ make a character live in an +imagined situation. But to write a vital play requires more +than this: it requires a knowledge—partly instinctive and +partly acquired—of men as well as of man, and especially of +the way in which one individual acts and reacts upon another in +the complex web of human life. To depict the workings of +the soul of man in a given situation is one thing—to depict +the impact of ego upon ego is another. When we consider +that the more poetical a poet is the more oblivious we expect him +to be of the machinery of social life, it is no wonder that +poetical dramatists are so rare. In drama, even poetic +drama, the poet must leave the “golden clime” in +which he was born, must leave those “golden stars +above” in order to learn this machinery, and not only learn +it, but take a pleasure in learning it.</p> +<p>In honest admiration of Tennyson’s dramatic work, where +it is admirable, we yield to none, at the time when ‘The +Foresters’ was somewhat coldly accepted by the press on +account of <!-- page 166--><a name="page166"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 166</span>its “lack of virility,” +we considered that in the class to which it belonged, the scenic +pastoral plays, it held a very worthy place. That +Tennyson’s admiration for Shakespeare was unbounded is +evident enough.</p> +<p>“There was no one,” says Jowett in his +recollections of Tennyson, “to whom he was so absolutely +devoted, no poet of whom he had a more intimate knowledge than +Shakespeare. He said to me, and probably to many others, +that there was one intellectual process in the world of which he +could not even entertain an apprehension—that was the plays +of Shakespeare. He thought that he could instinctively +distinguish between the genuine and the spurious in them, +<i>e.g.</i>, between those parts of ‘King Henry +VIII.,’ which are generally admitted to be spurious, and +those that are genuine. The same thought was partly working +in his mind on another occasion, when he spoke of two things, +which he conceived to be beyond the intelligence of man, and it +was certainly not repeated by him from any irreverence; the one, +the intellectual genius of Shakespeare—the other, the +religious genius of Jesus Christ.”</p> +<p>And in the pathetic account of Tennyson’s last moments +we find it recorded that on the Tuesday before the Wednesday on +which he died, he called out, “Where is my +Shakespeare? I must have my Shakespeare”; and again +on the day of his death, when the breath was passing out of his +body, he asked for his Shakespeare. <!-- page 167--><a +name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 167</span>All this, +however, makes it the more remarkable that of poets Shakespeare +had the least influence upon Tennyson’s art. There +was a fundamental unlikeness between the genius of the two +men. The only point in common between them is that each in +his own way captivated the suffrages both of the many and of the +fit though few, notwithstanding the fact that their methods of +dramatic approach in their plays are absolutely and fundamentally +different. Even their very methods of writing verse are +entirely different. Tennyson’s blank verse seems at +its best to combine the beauties of the Miltonic and the +Wordsworthian line; while nothing is so rare in his work as a +Shakespearean line. Now and then such a line as</p> +<blockquote><p>Authority forgets a dying king</p> +</blockquote> +<p>turns up, but very rarely. We agree with all Professor +Jebb says in praise of Tennyson’s blank verse.</p> +<p>“He has known,” says he, “how to modulate it +to every theme, and to elicit a music appropriate to each; +attuning it in turn to a tender and homely grace, as in +‘The Gardener’s Daughter ‘; to the severe and +ideal majesty of the antique, as in ‘Tithonus’; to +meditative thought, as in ‘The Ancient Sage,’ or +‘Akbar’s Dream’; to pathetic or tragic tales of +contemporary life, as in ‘Aylmer’s Field,’ or +‘Enoch Arden’; or to sustained romance narrative, as +in the ‘Idylls.’ No English poet has used blank +verse with such flexible variety, or <!-- page 168--><a +name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 168</span>drawn from +it so large a compass of tones; nor has any maintained it so +equably on a high level of excellence.”</p> +<p>But we fail to see where he touched Shakespeare on the +dramatic side of Shakespeare’s immense genius.</p> +<p>Tennyson had the yearning common to all English poets to write +Shakespearean plays, and the filial piety with which his son +tries to uphold his father’s claims as a dramatist is +beautiful; indeed, it is pathetic. But the greatest +injustice that can be done to a great poet is to claim for him +honours that do not belong to him. In his own line Tennyson +is supreme, and this book makes it necessary to ask once more +what that line is. Shakespeare’s stupendous fame has +for centuries been the candle into which all the various coloured +wings of later days have flown with more or less of +disaster. Though much was said in praise of +‘Harold’ by one of the most accomplished critics and +scholars of our time, Dr. Jebb, <a name="citation168"></a><a +href="#footnote168" class="citation">[168]</a> the play could not +keep the stage, nor does it live as a drama as any one of +Tennyson’s lyrics can be said to live. +‘Becket,’ to be sure, was a success on the +stage. A letter to Tennyson in 1884 from so competent a +student of Shakespeare as Sir Henry Irving declares that +‘Becket’ is a finer play than ‘King +John.’ Still, the ‘Morte d’Arthur,’ +‘The <!-- page 169--><a name="page169"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 169</span>Lotos-Eaters,’ ‘The +Gardener’s Daughter,’ outweigh the five-act tragedy +in the world of literary art. Of acted drama Tennyson knew +nothing at all. To him, evidently, the word <i>act</i> in a +printed play meant <i>chapter</i>; the word <i>scene</i> meant +<i>section</i>. In his early days he had gone occasionally +to see a play, and in 1875 he went to see Irving in Hamlet and +liked him better than Macready, whom he had seen in the +part. Still later he went to see Lady Archibald Campbell +act when ‘Becket’ was given “among the glades +of oak and fern in the Canizzaro Wood at Wimbledon.” +But handicapped as he was by ignorance of drama as a stage +product how could he write Shakespearean plays?</p> +<p>But let us for a moment consider the difference between the +two men as poets. It is hard to imagine the +master-dramatist of the world—it is hard to imagine the +poet who, by setting his foot upon allegory, saved our poetry +from drying up after the invasion of gongorism, euphuism, and +allegory—it is, we say, hard to imagine Shakespeare, if he +had conceived and written such lovely episodes as those of the +‘Idylls of the King,’ so full of concrete pictures, +setting about to turn his flesh-and-blood characters into +symbolic abstractions. There is in these volumes a curious +document, a memorandum of Tennyson’s presented to Mr. +Knowles at Aldworth in 1869, in which an elaborate <!-- page +170--><a name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +170</span>scheme for turning into abstract ideas the characters +of the Arthurian story is sketched:—</p> +<blockquote><p>K.A. Religious Faith.</p> +<p>King Arthur’s three Guineveres.</p> +<p>The Lady of the Lake.</p> +<p>Two Guineveres, ye first prim Christianity. 2d Roman +Catholicism: ye first is put away and dwells apart, 2d Guinevere +flies. Arthur takes to the first again, but finds her +changed by lapse of Time.</p> +<p>Modred, the sceptical understanding. He pulls Guinevere, +Arthur’s latest wife, from the throne.</p> +<p>Merlin Emrys, the Enchanter. Science. Marries his +daughter to Modred.</p> +<p>Excalibur, War.</p> +<p>The Sea, the people / The Saxons, the people } the S. are a +sea-people and it is theirs and a type of them.</p> +<p>The Round Table: liberal institutions.</p> +<p>Battle of Camlan.</p> +<p>2d Guinevere with the enchanted book and cup.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And Mr. Knowles in a letter to the biographer says:—</p> +<p>“He encouraged me to write a short paper, in the form of +a letter to <i>The Spectator</i>, on the inner meaning of the +whole poem, which I did, simply upon the lines he himself +indicated. He often said, however, that an allegory should +never be pressed too far.” Are all the lovely +passages of human passion and human pathos in these +‘Idylls’ allegorical—that is to +say—make-believe? The reason why allegorical poetry +is always second-rate, even at its best, is that it flatters the +reader’s intellect at the expense of his heart. Fancy +“the allegorical intent” behind the parting of Hector +and Andromache, and behind the death <!-- page 171--><a +name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 171</span>of +Desdemona! Thank Heaven, however, Tennyson’s +allegorical intent was a destructive afterthought. For, +says the biographer, “the allegorical drift here marked out +was fundamentally changed in the later schemes in the +‘Idylls.’” According to that delicate critic, +Canon Ainger, there is a symbolical intent underlying ‘The +Lady of Shalott’:—</p> +<p>“The new-born love for something, for some one in the +wide world from whom she has been so long secluded, takes her out +of the region of shadows into that of realities.”</p> +<p>But what concerns us here is the fact that when Shakespeare +wrote, although he yielded too much now and then to the passion +for gongorism and euphuism which had spread all over Europe, it +was against the nature of his genius to be influenced by the +contemporary passion for allegory. That he had a natural +dislike of allegorical treatment of a subject is evident, not +only in his plays, but in his sonnets. At a time when the +sonnet was treated as the special vehicle for allegory, +Shakespeare’s sonnets were the direct outcome of emotion of +the most intimate and personal kind—a fact which at once +destroys the ignorant drivel about the Baconian authorship of +Shakespeare’s plays, for what Bacon had was fancy, not +imagination, and Fancy is the mother of Allegory, Imagination is +the mother of Drama. The moment that <!-- page 172--><a +name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 172</span>Bacon +essayed imaginative work, he passed into allegory, as we see in +the ‘New Atlantis.’</p> +<p>It might, perhaps, be said that there are three kinds of +poetical temperament which have never yet been found equally +combined in any one poet—not even in Shakespeare +himself. There is the lyric temperament, as exemplified in +writers like Sappho, Shelley, and others; there is the meditative +temperament—sometimes speculative, but not always +accompanied by metaphysical dreaming—as exemplified in +Lucretius, Wordsworth, and others; and there is the dramatic +temperament, as exemplified in Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, +and Shakespeare. In a certain sense the Iliad is the most +dramatic poem in the world, for the dramatic picture lives +undisturbed by lyrism or meditation. In Æschylus and +Sophocles we find, besides the dramatic temperament, a large +amount of the lyrical temperament, and a large amount of the +meditative, but unaccompanied by metaphysical speculation. +In Shakespeare we find, besides the dramatic temperament, a large +amount of the meditative accompanied by an irresistible impulse +towards metaphysical speculation, but, on the whole, a moderate +endowment of the lyrical temperament, judging by the few +occasions on which he exercised it. For fine as are such +lyrics as “Hark, hark, the lark,” “Where the +bee sucks,” &c., other poets have written lyrics as +fine.</p> +<p><!-- page 173--><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +173</span>In a certain sense no man can be a pure and perfect +dramatist. Every ego is a central sun found which the +universe revolves, and it must needs assert itself. This is +why on a previous occasion, when speaking of the way in which +thoughts are interjected into drama by the Greek dramatists, we +said that really and truly no man can paint another, but only +himself, and what we call character-painting is at the best but a +poor mixing of painter and painted—a third something +between these two, just as what we call colour and sound are born +of the play of undulation upon organism. Very likely this +is putting the case too strongly. But be this as it may, it +is impossible to open a play of Shakespeare’s without being +struck with the way in which the meditative side of +Shakespeare’s mind strove with and sometimes nearly +strangled the dramatic. If this were confined to +‘Hamlet,’ where the play seems meant to revolve on a +philosophical pivot, it would not be so remarkable. But so +hindered with thoughts, reflections, meditations, and +metaphysical speculations was Shakespeare that he tossed them +indiscriminately into other plays, tragedies, comedies, and +histories, regardless sometimes of the character who uttered +them. With regard to metaphysical speculation, indeed, even +when he was at work on the busiest scenes of his dramas, it would +seem—as was said on the occasion before alluded +to—that Shakespeare’s <!-- page 174--><a +name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 174</span>instinct +for actualizing and embodying in concrete form the dreams of the +metaphysician often arose and baffled him. It would seem +that when writing a comedy he could not help putting into the +mouth of a man like Claudio those words which seem as if they +ought to have been spoken by a metaphysician of the Hamlet type, +beginning,</p> +<blockquote><p>Ay, but to die and go we know not where.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It would seem that he could not help putting into the mouth of +Macbeth those words which also seem as if they ought to have been +spoken on the platform at Elsinore, beginning,</p> +<blockquote><p>To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And if it be said that Macbeth was a philosopher as well as a +murderer, and might have thought these thoughts in the terrible +strait in which he then was, surely nothing but this marvellous +peculiarity of Shakespeare’s temperament will explain his +making Macbeth stop at Duncan’s bedroom door, dagger in +hand, to say,</p> +<blockquote><p>Now o’er the one half world Nature seems +dead, &c.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And again, though Prospero was very likely a philosopher too, +even he steals from Hamlet’s mouth such words of the +metaphysician as these:—</p> +<blockquote><p> We are such +stuff<br /> +As dreams are made on, and our little life<br /> +Is rounded with a sleep.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That this is one of Shakespeare’s most striking +characteristics will not be denied by any competent student of +his works. Nor will <!-- page 175--><a +name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 175</span>any such +student deny that, exquisite as his lyrics are, they are too few +and too unimportant in subject-matter to set beside his supreme +wealth of dramatic picture, and his wide vision as a thinker and +a metaphysical dreamer.</p> +<p>Now on which of these sides of Shakespeare does Tennyson +touch? Is it on the lyrical side? Shakespeare’s +fine lyrics are so few that they would be lost if set beside the +marvellous wealth of Tennyson’s lyrical work. On one +side only of Shakespeare’s genius Tennyson touches, +perhaps, more closely than any subsequent poet. As a +metaphysician none comes so near Shakespeare as he who wrote +these lines:—</p> +<blockquote><p> And more, my son! for more than +once when I<br /> +Sat all alone, revolving in myself<br /> +The word that is the symbol of myself,<br /> +The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,<br /> +And passed into the Nameless, as a cloud<br /> +Melts into Heaven. I touch’d my limbs, the limbs<br +/> +Were strange not mine—and yet no shade of doubt,<br /> +But utter clearness, and thro’ loss of Self.<br /> +The gain of such large life as match’d with ours<br /> +Were Sun to spark—unshadowable in words,<br /> +Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here, then, seems to be the truth of the matter: while +Shakespeare had immense dramatic power, and immense meditative +power with moderate lyric power, Tennyson had the lyric gift and +the meditative gift without the dramatic. His poems are +more full of reflections, meditations, and generalizations upon +human life than any poet’s since Shakespeare. But +then the moment <!-- page 176--><a name="page176"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 176</span>that Shakespeare descended from +those heights whether his metaphysical imagination had borne him, +he became, not a lyrist, as Tennyson became, but a +dramatist. And this divides Shakespeare as far from +Tennyson as it divides him from any other first-class +writer. We admirers of Tennyson must content ourselves with +this thought, that, wonderful as it is for Shakespeare to have +combined great metaphysical power with supreme power as a +dramatist, it is scarcely less wonderful for Tennyson to have +combined great metaphysical power with the power of a supreme +lyrist. Nay, is it not in a certain sense more wonderful +for a lyrical impulse such as Tennyson’s to be found +combined with a power of philosophical and metaphysical +abstraction such as he shows in some of his poems?</p> +<h2><!-- page 177--><a name="page177"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 177</span>IV. CHRISTINA GEORGINA +ROSSETTI.<br /> +1830–1894.</h2> +<h3>I.</h3> +<p>Although the noble poet and high-souled woman we have just +lost had been ill and suffering from grievous pain for a long +time, Death came at last with a soft hand which could but make +him welcome. Since early in August, when she took to her +bed, she was so extremely weak and otherwise ill that one +scarcely expected her (at any time) to live more than a month or +so, and for the last six weeks or thereabouts—say from the +15th of November—one expected her to die almost from day to +day. My dear friend William Rossetti, who used to go to +Torrington Square every afternoon, saw her on the afternoon of +December 28th [1894]. He did not, he told me, much expect +to find her alive in the afternoon of the 29th, and intended, +therefore, to make his next call earlier. She died at +half-past seven in the morning of the 29th, in the presence only +of her faithful nurse Mrs. Read. It was through her sudden +collapse that she missed at her side, <!-- page 178--><a +name="page178"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>when she +passed away, that brother whose whole life has been one of +devotion to his family, and whose tireless affection for the last +of them was one of the few links that bound Christina’s +sympathy to the earth.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p178b.jpg"> +<img alt="Christina Rossetti. From a crayon-drawing by D. G. +Rossetti reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. W. M. Rossetti" +src="images/p178s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Her illness was of a most complicated kind: two years and a +half ago she was operated on for cancer: functional malady of the +heart, accompanied by dropsy in the left arm and hand, +followed. Although on Friday the serious symptoms of her +case became, as I have said, accentuated, she was throughout the +day and night entirely conscious; and so peaceful and apparently +so free from pain was she that neither the medical man nor the +nurse supposed the end to be quite so near as it was. +During all this time, up to the moment of actual dissolution, her +lips seemed to be moving in prayer, but, of course, this with her +was no uncommon sign: duty and prayer ordered her life. Her +sufferings, I say, had been great, but they had been encountered +by a fortitude that was greater still. Throughout all her +life, indeed, she was the most notable example that our time has +produced of the masterful power of man’s spiritual nature +when at its highest to conquer in its warfare with earthly +conditions, as her brother Gabriel’s life was the most +notable example of the struggle of the spiritual nature with the +bodily when the two are equally equipped. It is the +conviction of one whose <!-- page 179--><a +name="page179"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 179</span>high +privilege it was to know her in many a passage of sorrow and +trial that of all the poets who have lived and died within our +time, Christina Rossetti must have had the noblest soul.</p> +<p>A certain irritability of temper, which was, perhaps, natural +to her, had, when I first became acquainted with her family +(about 1872), been overcome, or at least greatly chastened, by +religion (which with her was a passion) and by a large +acquaintance with grief, resulting in a long meditation over the +mystery of pain. In wordly matters her generosity may be +described as boundless; but perhaps it is not difficult for a +poet to be generous in a worldly sense—to be free in +parting with that which can be precious only to commonplace +souls. What, however, is not so easy is for one holding +such strong religious convictions as Christina Rossetti held to +cherish such generous thoughts and feelings as were hers about +those to whom her shibboleths meant nothing. This was what +made her life so beautiful and such a blessing to all. The +indurating effects of a selfish religiosity never withered her +soul nor narrowed it. With her, indeed, religion was very +love—</p> +<blockquote><p>A largess universal like the sun.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is always futile to make guesses as to what might have been +the development of a poet’s genius and character had the +education of <!-- page 180--><a name="page180"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 180</span>circumstances been different from +what it was, and perhaps it is specially futile to guess what +would have been the development under other circumstances of her, +the poet of whom her friends used to speak with affection and +reverence as “Christina.”</p> +<p>On the death of her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti (or as his +friends used to call him Gabriel) in 1882, I gave that sketch of +the family story which has formed the basis of most of the +biographical notices of him and his family; it would, therefore, +be superfluous to reiterate what I said and what is now matter of +familiar knowledge. It may, however, be as well to remind +the reader that, owing to the peculiar position in London of the +father Gabriele Rossetti, the family were during childhood and +partly during youth as much isolated from the outer English world +as were the family between whom and themselves there were many +points of resemblance—the Brontës. The two among +them who were not in youth of a retiring disposition were he who +afterwards became the most retiring of all, Gabriel, and Maria, +the latter of whom was in one sense retiring, and in another +expansive. In her dark brown, or, as some called them, +black eyes, there would suddenly come up and shine an enthusiasm, +a capacity of poetic and romantic fire, to the quelling of which +there must have gone an immensity of religious force. <!-- +page 181--><a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +181</span>As to Gabriel, during a large portion of his splendid +youth he exhibited a genial breadth of front that affined him to +Shakespeare and Walter Scott. The English strain in the +family found expression in him, and in him alone. There was +a something in the hearty ring of his voice that drew Englishmen +to him as by a magnet.</p> +<p>While it was but little that the others drew from the rich +soil of merry England, he drew from it half at least of his +radiant personality—half at least of his incomparable +genius. Though he was in every way part and parcel of that +marvellous little family circle of children of genius in +Charlotte Street, he had also the power of looking at it from the +outside. It would be strange, indeed, if this or any other +power should be found lacking in him. I have often heard +Rossetti—by the red flicker of the studio fire, when the +gas was turned down to save his eyesight—give the most +graphic and fascinating descriptions of the little group and the +way in which they grew up to be what they were under the tuition +of a father whose career can only be called romantic, and a +mother whose intellectual gifts were so remarkable that, had they +not been in some great degree stifled by the exercise of an +entire self-abnegation on behalf of her family, she, too, must +have become an important figure in literature.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p182b.jpg"> +<img alt="Mrs. Rossetti. From a crayon-drawing by D. G. Rossetti +reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. W. M. Rossetti" +src="images/p182s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The father died in 1854, many years before <!-- page 182--><a +name="page182"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 182</span>I knew the +family; but Gabriel’s description of him; his conversations +with his brother-refugees and others who visited the +house—conversations in which the dreamy and the +matter-of-fact were oddly blent; his striking skill as an +improvisatore of Italian poetry, and also as a master of +pen-and-ink drawing; his great musical gift—a gift which +none of his family seemed to have inherited; his fine tenor +voice; his unflinching courage and independence of character +(qualities which made him refuse, in a Protestant country, to +make open abjuration of the creed in which the Rossettis had been +reared, though he detested the Pope and all his works, and was, +if not an actual freethinker, thoroughly +latitudinarian)—Gabriel’s pictures of this poet and +father of poets were so vivid—so amazingly and incredibly +vivid—that I find it difficult to think I never met the +father in the flesh: not unfrequently I find myself talking of +him as if I had known him. What higher tribute than this +can be made to a narrator’s dramatic power? Those who +have seen the elder Rossetti’s pen-and-ink drawings (the +work of a child) will agree with me that Gabriel did not +over-estimate them in the least degree. All the Rossettis +inherited from their father voices so musical that they could be +recognized among other voices in any gathering, and no doubt that +clear-cut method of syllabification which was so marked a +characteristic <!-- page 183--><a name="page183"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 183</span>of Christina’s conversation, +but which gave it a sort of foreign tone, was inherited from the +father. Her affinity to the other two members of the family +was seen in that intense sense of duty of which Gabriel, with all +his generosity, had but little. There was no martyrdom she +would not have undertaken if she thought that duty called upon +her to undertake it, and this may be said of the other two.</p> +<p>In most things, however, Christina Rossetti seemed to stand +midway between Gabriel and the other two members of her family, +and it was the same in physical matters. She had +Gabriel’s eyes, in which hazel and blue-grey were +marvellously blent, one hue shifting into the other, answering to +the movements of the thoughts—eyes like the +mother’s. And her brown hair, though less warm in +colour than his during his boyhood, was still like it. When +a young girl, at the time that she sat for the Virgin in the +picture now in the National Gallery, she was, as both her mother +and Gabriel have told me, really lovely, with an extraordinary +expression of pensive sweetness. She used to have in the +little back parlour a portrait of herself at eighteen by Gabriel, +which gives all these qualities. Even then, however, the +fullness in the eyes was somewhat excessive. Afterwards her +ill health took a peculiar form, the effect of which was that the +eyes were, in a manner of speaking, pushed <!-- page 184--><a +name="page184"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 184</span>forward, +and although this protuberance was never disagreeable, it +certainly took a good deal of beauty from her face.</p> +<p>Dominant, however, as was the father’s personality among +his friends, the mother’s influence upon the children was +stronger than his; and no wonder, for I think there was no +beautiful charm of woman that Mrs. Rossetti lacked. She did +not seem at all aware that she was a woman of exceptional gifts, +yet her intellectual penetration and the curious exactitude of +her knowledge were so remarkable that Gabriel accepted her dicta +as oracles not to be challenged. One of her specialities +was the pronunciation of English words, in which she was an +authority. I cannot resist giving one little instance, as +it illustrates a sweet feature of Gabriel’s +character. It occurred on a lovely summer’s day in +the old Kelmscott manor house in 1873, when Mrs. Rossetti, +Christina, and myself were watching Gabriel at work upon +‘Proserpine.’ I had pronounced the word +<i>aspirant</i> with the accent upon the middle syllable. +“Pardon me, my dear fellow,” said he, without looking +from his work, “that word should be pronounced with the +accent on the first syllable, as a purist like you ought to +know.” On my challenging this, he said, in a tone +which was meant to show that he was saying the last word upon the +subject, “My mother always says <i>áspirant</i>, and +she is always right upon <!-- page 185--><a +name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 185</span>matters of +pronunciation.” “Then I shall always say +<i>áspirant</i>,” I replied. And I may add +that I now do say <i>áspirant</i>, and, right or wrong, +intend to say <i>áspirant</i> so long as this breath of +mine enables me to say <i>áspirant</i> at all. +Afterwards Christina, as we were strolling by the weir, watching +Gabriel and George Hake pounding across the meadows at the rate +of five miles an hour, said to me, “I think you were right +about <i>aspírant</i>.” “No,” I +said, “it is a dear, old-fashioned way. Your mother +says <i>áspirant</i>; I now remember that my own mother +said <i>áspirant</i>. I shall stick to +<i>áspirant</i> till the end of the chapter.” +And Christina said, “Then so will I.”</p> +<p>Among Mrs. Rossetti’s accomplishments was reading aloud, +mainly from imaginative writers, and I cannot recall without a +thrill of mingled emotions a delightful stay of mine at Kelmscott +in the summer of ’73, when she, whose age then was +seventy-three, used to read out to us all sorts of things. +And writing these words makes me hear those readings +again—makes me hear, through the open casement of the +quaint old house, the blackbirds from the home field trying in +vain to rival the music of that half-Italian, half-English +voice. To have been admitted into such a charmed circle I +look upon as one of the greatest privileges of my life. It +is something for a man to have lived within touch of Christina +Rossetti and her mother. <!-- page 186--><a +name="page186"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 186</span>From her +father, however, Christina took, either by the operation of some +law of heredity or from early association with the author of +‘Il Mistero dell’ Amor Platonico del Medio Evo’ +and ‘La Beatrice di Dante,’ that passion for +symbolism which is one of the chief features of her poetry. +There is, perhaps, no more striking instance of the inscrutable +lines in which ancestral characteristics descend than the way in +which the passion for symbolism was inherited by Christina and +Gabriel Rossetti from their father.</p> +<p>While Christina’s poetical work may be described as +being all symbolical, she was not much given, like her brother, +to read symbols into the every-day incidents of life. +Gabriel, on the contrary, though using symbolism in his poetry in +only a moderate degree, allowed his instinct for symbolizing his +own life to pass into positive superstition. When a party +of us—including Mrs. Rossetti, Christina, the two aunts, +Dr. Hake, with four of his sons, and myself—were staying +for Christmas with Gabriel near Bognor, a tree fell in the garden +during a storm. While Gabriel seemed inclined to take it as +a sign of future disaster, Christina, whose poetry is so full of +symbolism, would smile at such a notion. Yet Gabriel could +speak of his father’s symbolizing (as in ‘La Beatrice +di Dante’) as being absolutely and hopelessly eccentric and +worthless. This is <!-- page 187--><a +name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 187</span>remarkable, +for one would have thought that it was impossible to read those +extraordinary works of the elder Rossetti’s without being +impressed by the rare intellectual subtlety of the Italian +scholar.</p> +<p>Of course the opportunities of brother and sister of studying +Nature were identical. Both were born in London, and during +childhood saw Nature only as a holiday scene. Christina +would talk with delight of her grandfather’s cottage +retreat about thirty miles from London, to which she used to go +for a holiday in a stage coach, and of the beauty of the country +around. But these expeditions were not numerous, and came +to an end when she was a child of seven or eight, and it was very +little that she saw outside London before girlhood was +past. I have myself heard her speak of what she has +somewhere written about—the rapture of the sight of some +primroses growing in a railway cutting. It is, of course, a +great disadvantage to any poet not to have been born in the +country; learned in Nature the city-born poet can never be, as we +see in the case of Milton, who loved Nature without knowing +her. It is here that Jean Ingelow has such an advantage +over Christina Rossetti. Her love of flowers, and birds, +and trees, and all that makes the earth so beautiful, is not one +whit stronger than Christina’s own, but it is a love born +of an exhaustive detailed knowledge of Nature’s life.</p> +<p><!-- page 188--><a name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +188</span>On a certain occasion when walking with a friend at +Hunter’s Forestall, near Herne Bay, where she and her +mother were nursing Gabriel through one of his illnesses, the +talk ran upon Shelley’s ‘Skylark,’ a poem which +she adored. She was literally bewildered because the friend +showed that he was able to tell, from a certain change of sound +in the note of a skylark that had risen over the lane, the moment +when the bird had made up its mind to cease singing and return to +the earth. It seemed to her an almost supernatural gift, +and yet an ignorant ploughman will often be able to do the same +thing. This kind of intimacy with Nature she coveted. +With the lower animals, nevertheless, she had a strange kind of +sympathy of her own. Young creatures especially understood +the playful humour of her approach. A delightful fantastic +whim was the bond between her and puppies and kittens and +birds. Her intimacy with Nature—of a different kind +altogether from that of Wordsworth and Tennyson—was of the +kind that I have described on a previous occasion as Sufeyistic: +she loved the beauty of this world, but not entirely for itself; +she loved it on account of its symbols of another world +beyond. And yet she was no slave to the ascetic side of +Christianity. No doubt there was mixed with her +spiritualism, or perhaps underlying it, a rich sensuousness that +under other circumstances <!-- page 189--><a +name="page189"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 189</span>of life +would have made itself manifest, and also a rare potentiality of +deep passion. It is this, indeed, which makes the study of +her great and noble nature so absorbing.</p> +<p>Perhaps for strength both of subject and of treatment, +Christina Rossetti’s masterpiece is ‘Amor +Mundi.’ Here we get a lesson of human life expressed, +not didactically, but in a concrete form of unsurpassable +strength, harmony, and concision. Indeed, it may be said of +her work generally that her strength as an artist is seen not so +much in mastery over the rhythm, or even over the verbal texture +of poetry, as in the skill with which she expresses an +allegorical intent by subtle suggestion instead of direct +preachment. Herein ‘An Apple Gathering’ is +quite perfect. It is, however, if I may venture to say so, +a mistake to speak of Christina Rossetti as being a great poetic +artist. Exquisite as her best things are, no one had a more +uncertain hand than she when at work. Here, as in so many +things, she was like Blake, whose influence upon her was very +great.</p> +<p>Of self-criticism she had almost nothing. On one +occasion, many years ago now, she expressed a wish to have some +of her verses printed in <i>The Athenæum</i>, and I +suggested her sending them to 16, Cheyne Walk, her +brother’s house, where I then used to spend much time in a +study that I occupied there. I said that her brother and I +would read them together and <!-- page 190--><a +name="page190"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 190</span>submit them +to the editor. She sent several poems (I think about six), +not one of which was in the least degree worthy of her. +This naturally embarrassed me, but Gabriel, who entirely shared +my opinion of the poems, wrote at once to her and told her that +the verses sent were, both in his own judgment and mine, unworthy +of her, and that she “had better buckle to at once and +write another poem.” She did so, and the result was +an exquisite lyric which appeared in <i>The +Athenæum</i>. Here is where she was wonderfully +unlike Gabriel, whose power of self-criticism in poetry was +almost as great as Tennyson’s own. But in the matter +of inspiration she was, I must think, above Gabriel—above +almost everybody.</p> +<p>If English rhymed metres had been as easy to work in as +Italian rhymed metres, her imagination was so vivid, her poetic +impulse was so strong, and, indeed, her poetic wealth so +inexhaustible, that she would have stood in the front rank of +English poets. But the writer of English rhymed measures is +in a very different position as regards improvisatorial efforts +from the Italian who writes in rhymed measures. He has to +grapple with the metrical structure—to seize the form by +the throat, as it were, and force it to take in the enormous +wealth at the English poet’s command. Fine as is the +‘Prince’s Progress,’ for instance (and it would +be hard to <!-- page 191--><a name="page191"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 191</span>find its superior in regard to +poetic material in the whole compass of Victorian poetry), the +number of rugged lines the reader has to encounter weighs upon +and distresses him until, indeed, the conclusion is reached: then +the passion and the pathos of the subject cause the poem to rise +upon billows of true rhythm. On the other hand, however, it +may be said that a special quality of her verse is a <i>curiosa +felicitas</i> which makes a metrical blemish tell as a kind of +suggestive grace. But I must stop; I must bear in mind that +he who has walked and talked with Christina Rossetti, burdened +with a wealth of remembered beauty from earth and heaven, runs +the risk of becoming garrulous.</p> +<h3><!-- page 192--><a name="page192"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 192</span>II.</h3> +<p>In regard to unpublished manuscripts which a writer has left +behind him, the responsibilities of his legal representatives are +far more grave than seems to be generally supposed. In +deciding what posthumous writings an executor is justified in +giving to the public it is important, of course, to take into +account the character, the idiosyncrasy of the writer in regard +to all his relations towards what may be called the mechanism of +every-day life. Some poets are so methodical that the mere +fact of anything having been left by them in manuscript +unaccompanied by directions as to its disposal is <i>primâ +facie</i> evidence that it was intended to be withheld from the +public, either temporarily for revision or finally and +absolutely. And, of course, the representative, especially +if he is also a relative or a friend, has to consider primarily +the intentions of the dead. If loyalty to living friends is +a duty, what shall be said of loyalty to friends who are +dead? This, indeed, has a sanction of the deepest religious +kind.</p> +<p>No doubt, in the philosophical sense, the aspiration of the +dead artist for perfect work and the honour it brings is a +delusion, a sweet <!-- page 193--><a name="page193"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 193</span>mockery of the fancy. But then +so is every other aspiration which soars above the warm circle of +the human affections, and if this delusion of the dead artist was +held worthy of respect during the artist’s life, it is +worthy of respect—nay, it is worthy of +reverence—after he is dead. Now every true artist +when at work has before him an ideal which he would fain reach, +or at least approach, and if he does not himself know whether in +any given exercise he has reached that ideal or neared it, we may +be pretty sure that no one else does. Hence, whenever there +is apparent in the circumstances under which the MS. has been +found the slightest indication that the writer did not wish it to +be given to the public, the representative who ignores this +indication sins against that reverence for the dead which in all +forms of civilization declares itself to be one of the deepest +instincts of man.</p> +<p>That the instinct we are speaking of is really one of the +primal instincts is the very first fact that archæology +vouches for. Of many lost races, such as the Aztecs and +Toltecs, for instance, we have no historical traces save those +which are furnished by testimonials of their reverence for the +dead. But that this fine instinct is now dying out in the +Western world—that it will soon be eliminated from the +human constitution of races that are generally considered to be +the most advanced—is made <!-- page 194--><a +name="page194"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 194</span>manifest by +the present attitude of England and America towards their +illustrious dead. In the literary arena of both countries, +indeed, so entire is the abrogation of this most beautiful of all +feelings—so recklessly and so shamefully are not only raw +manuscripts, but private letters, put up to auction for +publication—that at last the great writers of our time, +confronted by this new terror, are wisely beginning to take care +of themselves and their friends by a holocaust of every scrap of +paper lying in their desks.</p> +<p>So demoralized has the literary world become by the present +craze for notoriety and for personal details of prominent men +that an executor who in regard to the disposal of his +testator’s money would act with the most rigid +scrupulousness will, in regard to the MSS. he finds in his +testator’s desk, commit, “for the benefit of the +public,” an outrage that would have made the men of a less +vulgar period shudder. The “benefit of the +public,” indeed! Who is this “public,” +and what are its rights as against the rights of the dead poet, +whose heartstrings are woven into “copy” by the +disloyal friend he trusted? The inherent callousness of +man’s nature is never so painfully seen as in the relation +of this ogre, “the public,” to dead genius. +Without the smallest real reverence for genius—without the +smallest capacity of distinguishing the poetaster it <!-- page +195--><a name="page195"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +195</span>always adores from the true poet it always +ignores—the public can still fall down before the pedestal +upon which genius has been placed by the select few—fall +down with its long ears wide open for gossip about genius, or +anything else that is talked about.</p> +<p>It was with such thoughts as these that we opened the present +somewhat bulky volume <a name="citation195"></a><a +href="#footnote195" class="citation">[195]</a>—not, +however, with many misgivings; for Christina Rossetti, before she +made her brother executor, knew what were his views as to the +rights of the public as against the rights of genius. And +if he has printed here every poem he could lay hands upon, he may +fairly be assumed to have done so with the consent of a sister +whom he loved so dearly and by whom he was so dearly loved. +Fortunately there are not many of these relics that are devoid of +a deep interest, some from the biographical point of view, some +from the poetical.</p> +<p>Again, what is to be said about such part of a dead +author’s writing as, having appeared in print, has +afterwards passed through the author’s crucible of artistic +revision? What about the executor’s duty here, where +the case between the author and the public stands on a different +footing? At the present time, when newspapers and novels +alone are read, it is not the poet’s verses which most +people read, but <!-- page 196--><a name="page196"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 196</span>paragraphs about what the author and +his wife and children “eat and drink and avoid”: a +time when, if the poet’s verses are read at all, it is the +accidents rather than the essentials of the work that seem +primarily to concern the public. At such a time an editor +is not entirely master of his actions. Doubtless, there is +much reason in the wrath of Tennyson and other great poets +against the “literary resurrection man,” who, though +incapable of understanding the beauties of a beautiful work, can +take a very great interest in poring over the various stages +through which that work has passed on its way to +perfection. These poets, however, are apt to forget that, +after a poem or line has once passed into print, its final +suppression is impossible. And perhaps there are other +reasons why, in this matter, an editor should be allowed some +indulgence.</p> +<p>Here, for instance, is a puzzling case to be tried <i>in foro +conscientiæ</i>. In the first edition of +‘Goblin Market,’ published in 1862, appeared three +poems of more breadth of treatment than any of the others: +‘Cousin Kate,’ a ballad, ‘Sister Maude,’ +a ballad, and ‘A Triad,’ a sonnet. In +subsequent issues of the book these were all omitted. Mr. +W. M. Rossetti, speaking of ‘Sister Maude,’ says: +“I presume that my sister, with overstrained scrupulosity, +considered its moral tone to be somewhat open to exception. +In such a view I by no means <!-- page 197--><a +name="page197"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 197</span>agree, and +I therefore reproduce it.” If Christina’s +objection was valid when she raised it, it is, of course, valid +now, when the beloved poet is in the “country beyond +Orion,” and knows what sanctions are of man’s +imagining, and what sanctions are more eternal than the movements +of the stars.</p> +<p>The question here is, What were Christina Rossetti’s +wishes? not whether her brother “agrees” with +them. Hence, if it were not certain that some one would +soon have restored them, would Mr. W. M. Rossetti have hesitated +before doing so? For they are among the most powerful +things Christina Rossetti ever wrote, and it was a subject of +deep regret to her friends that she suppressed them. Yet +she withdrew them from conscientious motives. In +‘Sister Maude’ she showed how great was her power in +the most difficult of all forms of poetic art—the romantic +ballad. Splendid as are Gabriel Rossetti’s +‘Sister Helen’ and ‘Rose Mary,’ the +literary <i>aura</i> surrounding them prevents them from +seeming—as the best of the Border ballads +seem—Nature’s very voice muttering in her dreams of +the pathos and the mystery of the human story. It was not, +perhaps, given even to Rossetti to get very near to that supreme +old poet (not forgotten, because never known) who wrote +“May Margaret’s” appeal to the ghost of her +lover Clerk Saunders:—</p> +<blockquote><p><!-- page 198--><a name="page198"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 198</span>Is there ony room at your head, +Saunders?<br /> + Is there ony room at your feet?<br /> +Is there ony room at your side, Saunders,<br /> + Where fain, fain I wad sleep?</p> +</blockquote> +<p>where the very imperfections of the rhymes seem somehow to add +to the pathos and the mystery of the chant. But if, indeed, +it has been given to any modern poet to get into this atmosphere, +it has been given to Christina Rossetti. And so with the +ballad of simple human passion no modern writer has quite done +what Christina Rossetti has done in one of the poems here +restored:—</p> +<h4>SISTER MAUDE.</h4> +<blockquote><p>Who told my mother of my shame,<br /> + Who told my father of my dear?<br /> +Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude,<br /> + Who lurked to spy and peer.</p> +<p>Cold he lies, as cold as stone,<br /> + With his clotted curls about his face:<br /> +The comeliest corpse in all the world,<br /> + And worthy of a queen’s embrace.</p> +<p>You might have spared his soul, sister,<br /> + Have spared my soul, your own soul too:<br /> +Though I had not been born at all,<br /> + He’d never have looked at you.</p> +<p>My father may sleep in Paradise,<br /> + My mother at Heaven-gate:<br /> +But sister Maude shall get no sleep<br /> + Either early or late.</p> +<p>My father may wear a golden gown,<br /> + My mother a crown may win;<br /> +If my dear and I knocked at Heaven-gate<br /> + Perhaps they’d let us in:<br /> +But sister Maude, O sister Maude,<br /> + Bide <i>you</i> with death and sin.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 199--><a name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +199</span>But it is for the personal poems that this volume will +be prized most dearly by certain readers.</p> +<p>Mr. W. M. Rossetti speaks of “the very wide and +exceedingly strong outburst of eulogy” of his sister which +appeared in the public press after her death. Yet that +outburst was far from giving adequate expression to what was felt +by some of her readers—those between whom and herself there +was a bond of sympathy so sacred and so deep as to be something +like a religion. It is not merely that she was the +acknowledged queen in that world (outside the arena called +“the literary world”) where poetry is “its own +exceeding great reward,” but to other readers of a +different kind altogether—readers who, drawing the deepest +delight from such poetry as specially appeals to them, never read +any other, and have but small knowledge of poetry as a fine +art—her verse was, perhaps, more precious still. They +feel that at every page of her writing the beautiful poetry is +only the outcome of a life whose almost unexampled beauty +fascinates them.</p> +<p>Although Christina Rossetti had more of what is called the +unconsciousness of poetic inspiration than any other poet of her +time, the writing of poetry was not by any means the chief +business of her life. She was too thorough a poet for +that. No one felt so deeply as she that poetic art is only +at the best the imperfect body in which dwells the poetic +soul. <!-- page 200--><a name="page200"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 200</span>No one felt so deeply as she that as +the notes of the nightingale are but the involuntary expression +of the bird’s emotion, and, again, as the perfume of the +violet is but the flower’s natural breath, so it is and +must be with the song of the very poet, and that, therefore, to +write beautifully is in a deep and true sense to live +beautifully. In the volume before us, as in all her +previously published writings, we see at its best what +Christianity is as the motive power of poetry. The +Christian idea is essentially feminine, and of this feminine +quality Christina Rossetti’s poetry is full.</p> +<p>In motive power the difference between classic and Christian +poetry must needs be very great. But whatever may be said +in favour of one as against the other, this at least cannot be +controverted, that the history of literature shows no human +development so beautiful as the ideal Christian woman of our own +day. She is unique, indeed. Men of science tell us +that among all the fossilized plants we find none of the lovely +family of the rose, and in the same way we should search in vain +through the entire human record for anything so beautiful as that +kind of Christian lady to whom self-abnegation is not only the +first of duties, but the first of joys. Yet, no doubt, the +Christian idea must needs be more or less flavoured by each +personality through which it is expressed. With regard to +Christina <!-- page 201--><a name="page201"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 201</span>Rossetti, while upon herself +Christian dogma imposed infinite obligations—obligations +which could never be evaded by her without the risk of all the +penalties fulminated by all believers—there was in the +order of things a sort of ether of universal charity for all +others. She would lament, of course, the lapses of every +soul, but for these there was a forgiveness which her own lapses +could never claim. There was, to be sure, a sweet egotism +in this. It was very fascinating, however. This +feeling explains what seems somewhat to puzzle the editor, +especially in the poem called ‘The End of the First +Part,’ written April 18th, 1849, of which he says, +“‘Tears for guilt’ is in reference to Christina +a very exaggerated phrase”:—</p> +<h4>THE END OF THE FIRST PART.</h4> +<blockquote><p>My happy dream is finished with,<br /> + My dream in which alone I lived so long.<br /> +My heart slept—woe is me, it wakeneth;<br /> + Was weak—I thought it strong.</p> +<p>Oh, weary wakening from a life-true dream!<br /> + Oh pleasant dream from which I wake in pain!<br /> +I rested all my trust on things that seem,<br /> + And all my trust is vain.</p> +<p>I must pull down my palace that I built,<br /> + Dig up the pleasure-gardens of my soul;<br /> +Must change my laughter to sad tears for guilt,<br /> + My freedom to control.</p> +<p>Now all the cherished secrets of my heart,<br /> + Now all my hidden hopes, are turned to sin.<br /> +Part of my life is dead, part sick, and part<br /> + Is all on fire within.</p> +<p><!-- page 202--><a name="page202"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +202</span>The fruitless thought of what I might have been,<br /> + Haunting me ever, will not let me rest.<br /> +A cold North wind has withered all my green,<br /> + My sun is in the West.</p> +<p>But, where my palace stood, with the same stone<br /> + I will uprear a shady hermitage;<br /> +And there my spirit shall keep house alone,<br /> + Accomplishing its age.</p> +<p>There other garden beds shall lie around,<br /> + Full of sweet-briar and incense-bearing thyme:<br /> +There I will sit, and listen for the sound<br /> + Of the last lingering chime.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It was the beauty of her life that made her personal influence +so great, and upon no one was that influence exercised with more +strength than upon her illustrious brother Gabriel, who in many +ways was so much unlike her. In spite of his deep religious +instinct and his intense sympathy with mysticism, Gabriel +remained what is called a free thinker in the true meaning of +that much-abused phrase. In religion as in politics he +thought for himself, and yet when Mr. W. M. Rossetti affirms that +the poet was never drawn towards free thinking women, he says +what is perfectly true. And this arose from the +extraordinary influence, scarcely recognized by himself, that the +beauty of Christina’s life and her religious system had +upon him.</p> +<p>This, of course, is not the place in which to say much about +him; nor need much at any time and in any place be said, for has +he not <!-- page 203--><a name="page203"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 203</span>written his own +biography—depicted himself more faithfully than Lockhart +could depict Walter Scott, more faithfully than Boswell could +depict Dr. Johnson? Has he not done this in the immortal +sonnet-sequence called ‘The House of Life’? +What poet of the nineteenth century do we know so intimately as +we know the author of ‘The House of Life’?</p> +<p>Christina Rossetti’s peculiar form of the Christian +sentiment she inherited from her mother, the sweetness of whose +nature was never disturbed by that exercise of the egoism of the +artist in which Christina indulged and without whose influence it +is difficult to imagine what the Rossetti family would have +been. The father was a poet and a mystic of the +cryptographic kind, and it is by no means unlikely that had he +studied Shakespeare as he studied Dante he would in these days +have been a disciple of the Baconians, and, of course, his +influence on the family in the matter of literary activity and of +mysticism must have been very great. And yet all that is +noblest in Christina’s poetry, an ever-present sense of the +beauty and power of goodness, must surely have come from the +mother, from whom also came that other charm of +Christina’s, to which Gabriel was peculiarly sensitive, her +youthfulness of temperament.</p> +<p>Among the many differences which exist between the sexes this +might, perhaps, be <!-- page 204--><a name="page204"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 204</span>mentioned, that while it is +beautiful for a man to grow old—grow old with the passage +of years—a woman to retain her charm must always remain +young. In a deep sense woman may be said to have but one +paramount charm, youth, and when this is gone all is gone. +The youthfulness of the body, of course, soon vanishes, but with +any woman who can really win and retain the love of man this is +not nearly so important as at first it seems. It is the +youthfulness of the soul that, in the truly adorable woman, is +invulnerable. It is one of the deep misfortunes of the very +poor of cities that as a rule the terrible struggle with the wolf +at the door is apt to sour the nature of women and turn them into +crones at the age when in the more fortunate classes the true +beauty of woman often begins; and even where the environment is +not that of poverty, but of straitened means, it is as a rule +impossible for a woman to retain this youthfulness.</p> +<p>In the case of the Rossettis, in the early period they were in +a position of straitened means. Nor was this all: the +children, Gabriel alone excepted, felt themselves to be by +nationality aliens. Christina, though she made only one +visit to Italy, felt herself to be an Italian, and would smile +when any one talked to her of the John Bullism of her brother +Gabriel, and yet, with these powerful causes working against +their natural elasticity of temperament, both <!-- page 205--><a +name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 205</span>mother and +daughter retained that juvenility which Gabriel Rossetti felt to +be so refreshing. So strong was it in the mother that it +had a strange effect upon the mere physique, and at eighty the +expression in the eyes, and, indeed, on the face throughout, +retained so much of the winsomeness of youth that she was more +beautiful than most young women:—</p> +<h4>1882.</h4> +<blockquote><p>My blessed mother dozing in her chair<br /> + On Christmas Day seemed an embodied Love,<br /> +A comfortable Love with soft brown hair<br /> + Softened and silvered to a tint of dove;<br /> +A better sort of Venus with an air<br /> + Angelical from thoughts that dwell above;<br /> +A wiser Pallas in whose body fair<br /> + Enshrined a blessed soul looks out thereof.<br /> +Winter brought holly then, now Spring has brought<br /> + Paler and frailer snowdrops shivering;<br /> +And I have brought a simple humble thought—<br /> + I her devoted duteous Valentine—<br /> +A lifelong thought which thrills this song I sing,<br /> + A lifelong love to this dear saint of mine.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Although this was not so with Christina, upon whose face +ill-health worked its ravages, her temperament, as we say, +remained as young as ever. The lovely +relations—sometimes staid and sometimes +playful—between mother and daughter, are seen throughout +the book before us. But especially are they seen in one +little group of poems—“The Valentines to her +Mother”—in regard to which Christina left the +following pencilled note:—</p> +<p>“These Valentines had their origin from my <!-- page +206--><a name="page206"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +206</span>dearest mother’s remarking that she had never +received one. I, her C. G. R., ever after supplied one on +the day; and (so far as I recollect) it was a surprise every +time, she having forgotten all about it in the +interim.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Rossetti’s first valentine was received when she +was nearly seventy-six years of age, and she continued every year +to receive a valentine until 1886, when she died. Surely +there is not in the history of English poetry anything more +fascinating than these valentines.</p> +<p>It is pleasing to see the book open with the following +dedication by Mr. W. M. Rossetti:—</p> +<p>“To Algernon Charles Swinburne, a generous eulogist of +Christina Rossetti, who hailed his genius and prized himself the +greatest of living British poets, my old and constant friend, I +dedicate this book.”</p> +<h2><!-- page 207--><a name="page207"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 207</span>V. DR. GORDON HAKE.<br /> +1809–1895.</h2> +<p>I little thought when I recently quoted from Dr. Hake’s +account of that Christmas gathering of the Rossettis at Bognor in +1875—a gathering which he has made historic—that +to-day I should be writing an obituary notice of the +“parable-poet” himself. It is true that, having +fractured a leg in a lamentable accident which befell him, he had +for the last few years been imprisoned in one room and compelled +during most of the time to lie in a horizontal position. +But notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding his great age, his +mental faculties remained so unimpaired that it was hard to +believe his death could be so near.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p208b.jpg"> +<img alt="Dr. Gordon Hake. From a crayon-drawing by D. G. +Rossetti reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. Thomas Hake" +src="images/p208s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Although, owing to his intimacy with George Borrow, Hake was +associated in the public mind with the Eastern Counties, he was +not an East Anglian. It was at Leeds (in 1809) that he +first saw the light. His mother was a Gordon of the Huntly +stock, and came of “the Park branch” of that +house. The famous General Gordon was his first cousin, and +it was owing to this fact that Hake’s son, Mr. Egmont <!-- +page 208--><a name="page208"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +208</span>Hake, was entrusted with the material for writing his +authoritative books upon the heroic Christian soldier. +Between Hake’s eldest son, Mr. T. St. E. Hake, a rising +novelist, and the General the likeness was curiously +strong. Nominated by one of his uncles to Christ’s +Hospital, Hake entered that famous school. He gives in his +‘Memoirs of Eighty Years’ a very vivid picture of it +and also a really vital portrait of himself. From his very +childhood he was haunted by a literary ambition which can only be +called an insatiable passion. It lasted till the very hour +of his death. When eleven years of age he became acquainted +with that one poet whose immensity of fame has for more than +three centuries been the flame into which the myriad Shakespeare +moths of English literature have been flying. The +Shakespearean of eleven summers did not, like so many Shakespeare +enthusiasts from Davenant down to those latest Shakespeares, +Homers, and Miltons of our contemporary paragraphists, get +himself up to look like the Stratford bust. The only man +who ever really looked like that bust was the late Dion +Boucicault, who did so without trying. But +Shakespeare’s wonderful work acted on the imagination of +the child of eleven in an equally humorous way. +“Shakespeare’s perfection,” he says in his +memoirs, “not only made me envious of the greatest of +writers, but it depressed me in turn with the feeling that <!-- +page 209--><a name="page209"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +209</span>I could never equal it howsoever long I might +live.”</p> +<p>Yet although this passion never passed away, but waxed with +his years, it must not be supposed that Hake suffered from what +in the “new criticism” is sweetly and appropriately +called “modernity”—in other words, that vulgar +greed for notoriety that in these days, when literature to be +listened to must be puffed like quack medicine and patent soap, +has made the atmosphere of the literary arena somewhat stifling +in the nostrils of those who turn from “modernity” to +poetic art. Nor was Hake’s feeling akin to that fine +despair</p> +<blockquote><p>Before the foreheads of the gods of song</p> +</blockquote> +<p>which true poets, great or small, know—that fine despair +which, while it will sometimes stop the breath of one of the true +sons of Apollo, as it actually did strike mute Charles Wells, and +as at one time it threatened to stop the breath of Rossetti, will +lead others to write, and write, and write. It is, however, +life’s illusions that in most cases make life +tolerable. When in old age calamity came upon Hake, and he +was shut out from life as by a prison wall, his one solace, the +one thing that really bound him to life, was this ambitious dream +which came upon the Bluecoat boy of eleven.</p> +<p>His mother was in easy circumstances, and when a youth Hake +travelled a good deal on the Continent, where his success in the +“great <!-- page 210--><a name="page210"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 210</span>world” of that time was swift +and complete. If this success was owing as much to his +exceptionally striking personal appearance and natural endowment +of style as to his intellectual equipments—high as these +were—that is not surprising to those who knew him. Of +course he was well advanced in years before I was old enough to +call him my friend; but even then he was so extremely handsome a +man that I can well believe the stories I have got from his +family connexions (such as his wife’s sisters) of his +appearance in youth. With the single exception of Tennyson, +he was the most poetical-looking poet I have ever seen. And +circumstances put to the best uses his natural gift of style; for +it was in the plastic period of his life that he met the best +people on the Continent and in England. I suspect, indeed, +that after the plastic period in a man’s life is passed it +is not of much use for him to come into contact with what used to +be called “the great world.” To be, or to seem +to be, unconscious of one’s own bearing towards the world, +and unconscious of the world’s bearing towards oneself, is, +I fancy, impossible to a man—even though he have the genius +and intellectual endowment of a Browning—who is for the +first time brought into touch with society after the plastic +period is passed.</p> +<p>I have told elsewhere the whimsical story of Hake and +Rossetti, of Rossetti’s delightful <!-- page 211--><a +name="page211"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 211</span>account of +his reading as a boy, in a coffee-house in Chancery Lane, +Hake’s remarkable romance ‘Vates,’ afterwards +called ‘Valdarno,’ in a magazine; his writing a +letter about it to the unknown author, and getting no reply until +many years had passed. Hake’s relations towards +Rossetti were of the deepest and most sacred kind. Rossetti +had the highest opinion of Hake’s poetical genius, and also +felt towards him the greatest love and gratitude for services of +an inestimable kind rendered to him in the direst crisis of his +life. To enter upon these matters, however, is obviously +impossible in a brief and hurried obituary notice; and equally +impossible is it for me to enter into the poetic principles of a +writer whose very originality has been a barrier to his winning a +wide recognition.</p> +<p>Hake’s best work is that, I think, contained in the +volume called ‘New Symbols,’ in which there is +disclosed an extraordinary variety of poetic power. In +execution, too, he is at his best in that volume. Christina +Rossetti has often told me that ‘Ecce Homo’ impressed +her more profoundly than did any other poem of her own +time. Also its daring startled her. It was, however, +the previous volume, ‘Madeline, and other Poems,’ +which brought him into contact with Rossetti—the great +event of his literary life.</p> +<p>If the man ever lived who could take as much <!-- page +212--><a name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +212</span>interest in another man’s work as his own, Dr. +Hake in finding Rossetti found that man. Although at that +time Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, William Morris, and +Swinburne were running abreast of each other, there was no poet +in England who would not have felt honoured by having his work +reviewed by Rossetti. But Dr. Hake, whose name was +absolutely unknown, had made his way into Rossetti’s +affections—as, indeed, he made his way into the affections +of all who knew him—and this was quite enough to induce +Rossetti to ask Dr. Appleton for leave to review +‘Madeline’ in ’71 in <i>The Academy</i>—a +request which Appleton, of course, was delighted to grant. +And again, when in 1873 ‘Parables and Tales’ +appeared, Mr. John Morley, we may be sure, was something more +than willing to let Rossetti review the book in <i>The +Fortnightly Review</i>; and, again, when ‘New +Symbols’ appeared, there was some talk about +Rossetti’s reviewing it in <i>The Fortnightly Review</i>; +but this, for certain reasons which Rossetti explained to +me—reasons which have been misunderstood, but which were +entirely adequate—was abandoned. Down to the period +when Dr. Hake went to live in Germany he and his son Mr. Gordon +Hake were among the most intimate friends of the great +poet-painter. Mr. Gordon Hake, indeed, a man of admirable +culture and abilities, lived with Rossetti, who certainly +benefited much by <!-- page 213--><a name="page213"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 213</span>contact with his bright and lively +companion. The portrait of Dr. Hake prefixed to Mrs. +Meynell’s selections from his works is one of +Rossetti’s finest crayons. It is, however, too heavy +in expression for Hake.</p> +<p>Full of fine qualities as is his best poetry, full of +intellectual subtlety, imagination, and a rare combination of +subjective with objective power, there is apparently in it a +certain <i>je ne sais quoi</i> which has prevented him at present +from winning his true meed of fame. His hand, no doubt, is +uncertain; but so is the hand of many a successful +poet—that of Christina Rossetti, for instance. For +sheer originality of conception and of treatment what recent +poems surpass or even equal ‘Old Souls’ and the +‘Serpent Charmer’? Then take the remarkable +mastery over colour exhibited by ‘Ortrud’s +Vision.’ His volume of pantheistic sonnets in the +Shakespearean form, ‘The New Day,’ written in his +eighty-first year, is on the whole, however, his most remarkable +work. The kind of Sufeyistic nature ecstasy displayed +therein by a man of so advanced an age is nothing less than +wonderful. And as to knowledge of nature, not even +Wordsworth or Tennyson knew nature so completely as did Hake, for +he had a thorough training as a naturalist. In looking at a +flower he could enjoy not only its beauty, but also the delight +of picturing to himself the flower’s inherited <!-- page +214--><a name="page214"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +214</span>beauty and the ancestors from which the flower got its +inheritance. And as regards the lyrical flow imported into +so monumental a form as the sonnet, every student of this form +must needs study the book with the greatest interest. His +very latest work, however, is in prose. I find it extremely +difficult to write about ‘Memoirs of Eighty +Years.’ It is full of remarkable qualities: wit, +humour, an ebullience of animal spirits that is +Rabelaisian. What it lacks (and in some portions of it +greatly lacks) is delicacy, refinement of tone. And surely +this is remarkable when we realize the kind of man he was who +wrote it.</p> +<p>It has been my privilege to go about with him not only in +London, but also in Rome, in Paris, in Venice, in Florence, Pisa, +&c.; and no matter what might be the quality of the society +with which he was brought into contact, it always seemed to me +that he was distinguished by his very lack of that accentuated +movement which the <i>littérateur</i> generally +displays. I merely dwell upon this to show how inscrutable +are the mental processes in the crowning puzzle of the great +humourist Nature, the writing man. Just as the most angular +and <i>gauche</i> man in a literary gathering may possibly turn +out to be the poet whose lyrics have been compared to Shelley, or +the prose writer whose mellifluous periods have been compared to +those of Plato, so the most dignified man in <!-- page 215--><a +name="page215"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 215</span>the room +may turn out to be the writer of a book whose defect is a +noticeable lack of dignified style. It was hard, indeed, +for those who knew Hake in the flesh to believe that the +‘Memoirs of Eighty Years’ was written by him. I +suppose I shall be expected to say a word about the famous +intimacy between Hake and Borrow. After Hake went to live +in Germany, Borrow told me a good deal about this intimacy and +also about his own early life; for reticent as he naturally was, +he and I got to be confidential and intimate. His +friendship with Hake began when Hake was practising as a +physician in Norfolk. It lasted during the greater part of +Borrow’s later life. When Borrow was living in +London, his great delight was to walk over on Sundays from +Hereford Square to Coombe End, call upon Hake, and take a stroll +with him over Richmond Park. They both had a passion for +herons and for deer. At that time Hake was a very intimate +friend of my own, and having had the good fortune to be +introduced by him to Borrow, I used to join the two in their +walks. Afterwards, when Hake went to live in Germany, I +used to take these walks with Borrow alone. Two more +interesting men it would be impossible to meet. The +remarkable thing was that there was between them no sort of +intellectual sympathy. In style, in education, in +experience, whatever Hake was Borrow was <!-- page 216--><a +name="page216"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 216</span>not. +Borrow knew almost nothing of Hake’s writings, either in +prose or in verse. His ideal poet was Pope, and when he +read, or rather looked into, Hake’s ‘World’s +Epitaph,’ he thought he did Hake the greatest honour by +saying, “There are lines here and there that are nigh as +good as Pope’s.” On the other hand, +Hake’s acquaintance with Borrow’s works was far +behind that of some Borrovians who did not know Lavengro in the +flesh, such as Mr. Saintsbury and Mr. Birrell.</p> +<p>Borrow was shy, eccentric, angular, rustic in accent and in +locution, but with a charm for me, at least, that was +irresistible. Hake was polished, easy, and urbane in +everything, and, although not without prejudice and bias, ready +to shine gracefully in any society. As far as Hake was +concerned, the sole link between them was that of reminiscence of +earlier days and adventures in Borrow’s beloved East +Anglia. Among many proofs that I could adduce of this, I +will give one. I am the possessor of the manuscript of +Borrow’s ‘Gypsies in Spain,’ written partly in +a Spanish note-book as he moved about Spain in his colporteur +days. It was my wish that Hake would leave behind him some +memorial of Borrow more worthy of himself and his friend than +those brief reminiscences contained in ‘Memoirs of Eighty +Years.’ I took to Hake this precious relic of one of +the most wonderful men of the nineteenth <!-- page 217--><a +name="page217"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 217</span>century in +order to discuss with him differences between the MS. and the +printed text. Hake was sitting in his invalid chair, +writing verses. “What does it all matter?” he +said. “I do not think you understand Lavengro,” +said I. Hake replied, “And yet Lavengro had an +advantage over me, for <i>he</i> understood <i>nobody</i>. +Every individuality with which he was brought into contact had, +as no one knows better than you, to be tinged with colours of his +own before he could see it at all.”</p> +<p>This, of course, was true enough; and Hake’s asperities +when speaking of Borrow in ‘Memoirs of Eighty +Years’—asperities which have vexed a good many +Borrovians—simply arose from the fact that it was +impossible for two such men to understand each other. When +I told him of Andrew Lang’s angry onslaught upon Borrow, in +his notes to the “Waverley Novels,” on account of his +attacks upon Scott, he said, “Well, and does he not deserve +it?” When I told him of Miss Cobbe’s +description of Borrow as a <i>poseur</i>, he said to me, “I +told you the same scores of times. But I saw that Borrow +had bewitched you during that first walk under the rainbow in +Richmond Park. It was that rainbow, I think, that befooled +you.” Borrow’s affection for Hake, however, was +both strong and deep, as I saw after Hake had gone to Germany and +in a way dropped out of Borrow’s ken. Yet Hake was as +good a man <!-- page 218--><a name="page218"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 218</span>as ever Borrow was, and for certain +others with whom he was brought in contact as full of a genuine +affection as Borrow was himself.</p> +<h2><!-- page 219--><a name="page219"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 219</span>JOHN LEICESTER WARREN, LORD DE +TABLEY.<br /> +1835–1895.</h2> +<h3>I.</h3> +<p>In the death of Lord de Tabley, the English world of letters +has lost a true poet and a scholar of very varied +accomplishments. His friends have lost much more. +Since his last attack of influenza, those who knew him and loved +him had been much concerned about him. The pallor of his +complexion had greatly increased; so had his feebleness. As +long ago as May last, when I called upon him at the +Athenæum Club in order to join him at a luncheon he was +giving at the Café Royal, I found that he had engaged a +four-wheeled cab to take us over those few yards. The +expression in his kind and wistful blue-grey eyes showed that he +had noted the start of surprise I gave on seeing the cab waiting +for us. “You know my love of a growler,” he +said; “this is just to save us the bother of getting across +the Piccadilly cataracts.” I thought to myself, +“I wish it were only the bother of crossing the cataracts +which accounts for the growler.”</p> +<p><!-- page 220--><a name="page220"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +220</span>Another sign that the physical part of him was in the +grip of the demon of decay was that, instead of coming to the +Pines to luncheon, as had been his wont, he preferred of late to +come to afternoon tea, and return to Elm Park before +dinner. And on the occasion when he last came in this way +it seemed to us here that he had aged still more; yet his +intellectual forces had lost nothing of their power. And as +a companion he was as winsome as ever. That fine quality +with which he was so richly endowed, the quality which used to be +called “urbanity,” was as fresh when I saw him last +as when I first knew him. That sweet sagacity, mellowed and +softened by a peculiarly quiet humour, shone from his face at +intervals as he talked of the pleasant old days when he was my +colleague on <i>The Athenæum</i>, and when I used to call +upon him so frequently on my way to Rossetti in Cheyne Walk to +chat over “the walnuts and the wine” about +poetry.</p> +<p>My own friendship with him began at my first meeting him, and +this was long ago. Being at that time a less-known man of +letters than I am now, supposing that to be possible, I was +astonished one day when my friend Edmund Gosse told me that his +friend Leicester Warren had expressed a wish to meet me on +account of certain things of mine which he had read in <i>The +Examiner</i> and <i>The Athenæum</i>. I accepted with +alacrity Mr. Gosse’s invitation to one of those <!-- page +221--><a name="page221"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +221</span>charming <i>salons</i> of his on the banks of +Westbournia’s Grand Canal which have become historic. +I was surprised to find Warren, who was then scarcely above +forty, looking so old, not to say so old-fashioned. At that +time he did not wear the moustache and beard which afterwards +lent a picturesqueness to his face. There was a kind of +rural appearance about him which had for me a charm of its own; +it suited so well with his gentle ways, I thought. This +being the impression he made upon me, it may be imagined how +delighted I was shortly afterwards to see him come to the door of +Ivy Lodge, Putney, where I was then living alone. Nor was I +less surprised than delighted to see him. On realizing at +Gosse’s <i>salon</i> that my new acquaintance was a +botanist, I had fraternized with him on this point, and had +described to him an extremely rare and lovely little tree growing +in the centre of my garden, which some unknown lover of trees had +imported. I had given Warren a kind of general invitation +to come some day and see it. So early a call as this I had +not hoped to get. Perhaps I thought so reclusive a man as +he even then appeared would never come at all.</p> +<p>After having duly admired the tree he turned to the Rossetti +crayons on the walls of the rooms; but although he talked much +about ‘The Spirit of the Rainbow’ and the design from +the same beautiful model which William <!-- page 222--><a +name="page222"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 222</span>Sharp has +christened ‘Forced Music,’ the loveliness of which +attracted him not a little, I perceived that he had something +else that he wanted to talk about, and allowed him to lead the +conversation up to it. To my surprise I found that, so far +from having perceived how much he had interested me, he had +imagined that my attitude towards him was constrained, and had +explained it to his own discomfort after the following fashion: +“Watts has an intimate friend of whose poetry I am a deep +admirer—so deep indeed that some people, and not without +reason, have said that my own poetry is unduly influenced by +it. But an article by me in <i>The Fortnightly</i> goes out +of its way to dub as a ‘minor poet’ the very writer +to whose influence I have succumbed. It is the incongruity +between my dubbing my idol a ‘minor poet’ and my real +and most obvious admiration of his work that makes Watts, in +spite of an external civility, feel unfriendly towards me. +Yet there is no real incongruity, for it was the editor, G. H. +Lewes, who, after my proof had been returned for press, +interpolated the objectionable words about the minor +poet.”</p> +<p>This was how he had been reasoning. When I laughed and +told him to recast his syllogism—told him that I had never +seen the article in question, and doubted whether my friend +had—matters became very bright between us. He stayed +to luncheon; we walked <!-- page 223--><a +name="page223"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 223</span>on the +Common; I showed him our Wimbledon sun-dews; in a word, I felt +that I had discovered a richer gold mine than the richest in the +world, a new friend. Had I then known him as well as I +afterwards did, I should have been aware that he had a strong +dash of the sensitive, not to say the morbid, in his +nature. He had a habit of submitting almost every incident +of his life to such an analysis as that I have been +describing.</p> +<p>On another occasion, when years later he had a difference with +a friend, I reminded him of the incident recorded above, and made +him laugh by saying, “My dear Warren, you are so afraid of +treading on people’s corns that you tread upon +them.”</p> +<p>On first visiting him, as on many a subsequent occasion, I was +struck by the variety of his intellectual interests, and the +thoroughness with which he pursued them all. I have lately +said in print what I fully believe—that he was the most +learned of English poets, if learning means something more than +mere scholarship. He was a skilled numismatist, and in 1862 +published, through the Numismatic Society, ‘An Essay on +Greek Federal Coinage,’ and an essay ‘On Some Coins +of Lycia under Rhodian Domination and of the Lycian +League.’ He even took an interest in book-plates, and +actually, in 1880, published ‘A Guide to the Study of +Book-Plates.’ I should not have been <!-- page +224--><a name="page224"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 224</span>at +all surprised to learn that he was also writing a guide for the +collectors of postage stamps.</p> +<p>At this time he had published a good deal of verse; for +instance, ‘Eclogues and Monodramas’ in 1865; +‘Studies in Verse’ in 1866; ‘Orestes’ in +1867; a collection of poems called ‘Rehearsals’ in +1873; another collection, called ‘The Searching Net,’ +in 1876. From this time, during many years, I saw him +frequently, although, for a reason which it is not necessary to +discuss here, he became seized with a deep dislike of the +literary world and its doings, and I am not aware that he saw any +literary man save myself and the late W. B. Scott, the bond +between whom and himself was “book-plates”! +Then he took to residing in the country. As a poet he +seemed to be quite forgotten, save by students of poetry, until +his name was revived by means of Mr. Miles’s colossal +anthology ‘The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth +Century,’ Mr. Miles, it seems, was a great admirer of Lord +de Tabley’s poetry, and managed to reach the hermit in his +cell. In the sixth volume of his work Mr. Miles gave a +judicious selection from Lord de Tabley’s poems and an +admirable essay upon them. The selection attracted a good +deal of attention.</p> +<p>On finding that the public would listen to him, I urged him to +bring out a volume of selected pieces from all his works, an idea +which for some time he contested with his usual <!-- page +225--><a name="page225"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +225</span>pessimistic vigour. Having, however, set my heart +upon it, I spoke upon the subject to Mr. John Lane, who at once +saw his way to bring out such a volume at his own risk. To +the poet’s astonishment the book was a success, and it at +once passed into a second edition. In the spring of this +year he was emboldened to bring out another volume of new poems, +and his name became firmly re-established as a poet. It was +after the success of the first book that he consulted me upon a +question which was then upon his mind: Should he devote his +future energies to literature or to making himself a position as +a speaker in the Lords? He had lately had occasion to speak +both in the country and in the Lords upon some local matter of +importance, and his success had in some slight degree revived an +old aspiration to plunge into the world of politics. He was +a Liberal, and in 1868 he had contested—but +unsuccessfully—Mid-Cheshire. This was on the first +election for that division after the Reform Act of 1867. +His support in a county so Conservative as Cheshire had really +been very strong, but he never made another effort to get into +Parliament. “You know my way,” he used to +say. “I can make one spring—perhaps a pretty +good spring—but not more than one.”</p> +<p>On the whole, he leaned towards the idea of going into +politics. The way in which he put the case to me was +thoroughly characteristic of <!-- page 226--><a +name="page226"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 226</span>him: +“Even if my verse were strong and vital, which I fear it is +not, there is almost no chance for men of my generation receiving +more than a slight attention at the present day. Things +have altogether changed since the sixties and seventies, when I +published my most important work—at a time when the +prominent names were Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, +Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne. The old critical oracles +are now dumb; the reviewers are all young men whose knowledge of +poetry does not go back so far as the sixties. Those who +reviewed the selection from my work in Miles’s book showed +themselves to be entirely unconscious of the name of Leicester +Warren, and treated the poems there selected as being the work of +a new writer; and even when the poems published by Lane came out, +no one seemed to be aware that they were by a writer who was very +much to the fore a quarter of a century ago. That book has +had a flutter of success, but in how large a degree was the +success owing to the curiosity excited by the book of a man of my +generation being brought out now, and by the publisher of the men +of this? With all my sympathy with the work of the younger +men and my admiration of some of it, things, I say, have changed +since those days.”</p> +<p>I did not share these pessimistic views. Moreover, +knowing as I did how extremely <!-- page 227--><a +name="page227"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 227</span>sensitive +he was, I knew that his figuring in Parliament would result in +the greatest pain to him, and if I gave a somewhat exaggerated +expression with regard to my hopes of him in the literary world, +it was a kindly feeling towards himself that impelled me to do +so. He took my advice and proceeded to gather material for +another volume.</p> +<p>To define clearly the impression left upon one by intercourse +with any man is difficult. In De Tabley’s case it is +almost impossible. His remarkable modesty, or rather +diffidence, was what, perhaps, struck me most. It was a +genuine lack of faith in his own powers; it had nothing whatever +to do with “mock-modesty.” I had a singular +instance of this diffidence in the autumn of last year. +Lord de Tabley, who was staying at Ryde, having learnt that I was +staying with a friend near Niton Bay, wrote to me there saying +that he somewhat specially wanted to see me, and proposed our +lunching together at an hotel at Ventnor. I was delighted +to accede to this, for, like all who fully knew Lord de Tabley, I +was thoroughly and deeply attached to him. He was so +genuine and so modest and so genial—unsoured by the great +and various sorrows of which he used sometimes to talk to me by +the cosy study fire—nay, sweetened by them, as I often +thought—so grateful for the smallest service rendered in an +arena where ingratitude sometimes seems <!-- page 228--><a +name="page228"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 228</span>to be the +<i>vis motrix</i> of life—a truly lovable man, if ever +there was one.</p> +<p>I drove over to Ventnor. As I chanced to reach the hotel +somewhat before the appointed time, and he had not arrived, I +drove on to Bonchurch along the Shanklin road. On my way +back, I passed a four-wheel cab; but not dreaming that his love +of the “growler” reached beyond London, I never +thought of him in connexion with it until I saw the well-known +face with its sweet thoughtful expression looking through the cab +window. On this occasion it looked so specially thoughtful +that I imagined something serious had occurred. At the +hotel I found that he had secured a snug room and a luxurious +luncheon. An ominous packet of writing-paper peering from +his overcoat pocket convinced me that it was a manuscript brought +for me to read, and feeling that I should prefer to get it over +before luncheon, I asked him to show it to me. He then told +me its history. Having sent by special invitation a poem to +<i>The Nineteenth Century</i>, the editor had returned +it—returned it with certain strictures upon portions of +it. This incident he had at once subjected to the usual +analysis, and had come to the conclusion that certain outside +influences of an invidious kind had been brought to play upon the +editor.</p> +<p>Time was when I should have shrunk with terror from so +thankless a task as that of reading <!-- page 229--><a +name="page229"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 229</span>a +manuscript with such a frightful history, but it is astonishing +what a long experience in the literary world will do for a man in +perplexities of this kind. I read the manuscript and the +editor’s courteous but sagacious comments, and I found that +the poet had undertaken a subject which was utterly and almost +inconceivably alien to his genius. As I read I felt the +wistful gaze fixed upon me while the waiter was moving in and out +of the room, preparing the luncheon table. +“Well,” said he, as I laid the manuscript down, +“what do you think? do you agree with the +editor?” “Not entirely,” I said. +“Not entirely!” he exclaimed; then turning to the +waiter, he said, “You can leave the soup, and I will ring +when we are ready.” “Not entirely,” I +repeated. “With all the editor’s strictures I +entirely agree, but he says that by working upon it you may make +it into a worthy poem: there I disagree with him. I +consider it absolutely hopeless. I regret now that we did +not leave the matter until after luncheon, but we will not let it +spoil our appetites.”</p> +<p>I am afraid it did spoil our appetites nevertheless, for I +felt that I had been compelled, for his own sake, to give him +pain. He was much depressed, declared that the success of +his late book was entirely factitious, and vowed that nothing +should ever persuade him to write another line of verse, and that +he would now devote his attention to a peer’s duties in the +<!-- page 230--><a name="page230"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +230</span>House of Lords. I was so disturbed myself at thus +paining so lovable a friend that next day I wrote to him, trying +to soften what I had said, and urged him to do as the editor of +<i>The Nineteenth Century</i> had suggested, write another +poem—a poem upon some classical subject, which he would +deal with so admirably. The result of it all was that he +found the editor’s strictures on the unlucky poem to be +absolutely well grounded, and wrote for <i>The Nineteenth +Century</i> ‘Orpheus,’ one of the finest of his later +poems.</p> +<p>I think these anecdotes of Lord de Tabley will show why we who +knew him were so attached to him.</p> +<h3><!-- page 231--><a name="page231"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 231</span>II.</h3> +<p>Can it be claimed for Lord de Tabley that in the poetical +firmament which hung over the days of his youth—when the +heavens were bright with such luminaries as Tennyson, Browning, +Matthew Arnold, Rossetti, Swinburne, and Morris—he had a +place of his own? We think it can. And in saying this +we are fully conscious of the kind of praise we are awarding +him. Whatever may be said for or against the artistic +temper of the present hour, it must certainly be said of the time +we are alluding to that it was great as regards its wealth of +poetic genius, and as regards its artistic temper greater +still. It was a time when “the beauteous damsel +Poesy, honourable and retired,” whom Cervantes described, +dared still roam the English Parnassus, “a friend of +solitude,” disturbed by no clash of Notoriety’s +brazen cymbals, “where fountains entertained her, woods +freed her from <i>ennui</i>, and flowers delighted +her”—delighted her for their own sakes. In +order to write such verses as the following from the concluding +poem of the volume before us <a name="citation231"></a><a +href="#footnote231" class="citation">[231]</a> a man must really +have passed <!-- page 232--><a name="page232"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 232</span>into that true mood of the poet +described by the great Spanish humourist:—</p> +<blockquote><p>How idle for a spurious fame<br /> + To roll in thorn-beds of unrest;<br /> +What matter whom the mob acclaim,<br /> + If thou art master of thy breast?</p> +<p>If sick thy soul with fear and doubt,<br /> + And weary with the rabble din,—<br /> +If thou wouldst scorn the herd without,<br /> + First make the discord calm within.</p> +<p>If we are lords in our disdain,<br /> + And rule our kingdoms of despair,<br /> +As fools we shall not plough the main<br /> + For halters made of syren’s hair.</p> +<p>We need not traverse foreign earth<br /> + To seek an alien Sorrow’s face.<br /> +She sits within thy central hearth,<br /> + And at thy table has her place.</p> +<p>So with this hour of push and pelf,<br /> + Where nought unsordid seems to last,<br /> +Vex not thy miserable self,<br /> + But search the fallows of the past.</p> +<p>In Time’s rich track behind us lies<br /> + A soil replete with root and seed;<br /> +There harvest wheat repays the wise,<br /> + While idiots find but charlock weed.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Between the writer of the above lines and those great poets +who in his youth were his contemporaries there is this point of +affinity: like them his actual achievements do not strike the +reader so forcibly as the potentialities which those achievements +reveal. In the same way that Achilles was suggested by his +“spear” in the picture in the chamber of Lucrece, the +poet who writes not for fame, but writes to <!-- page 233--><a +name="page233"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 233</span>please +himself, suggests unconsciously his own portrait by every +touch:—</p> +<blockquote><p>For much imaginary work was there;<br /> +Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,<br /> +That for Achilles’ image stood his spear<br /> +Grip’d in an armèd hand; himself behind<br /> +Was left unseen save to the eye of mind:<br /> +A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,<br /> +Stood for the whole to be imaginèd.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Poets, indeed, have always been divisible into those whose +poetry gives the reader an impression that they are greater than +their work, and those whose poetry gives the reader a contrary +impression. There have always been poets who may say of +themselves, like the “Poet” in ‘Timon of +Athens,’</p> +<blockquote><p>Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes<br /> +From whence ’tis nourished: the fire i’ the flint<br +/> +Shows not till it be struck.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And there have always been poets whose verse, howsoever good +it may be, shows that, although they have been able to mould into +poetic forms the riches of the life around them, and also of the +literature which has come to them as an inheritance, they are +simply working for fame, or rather for notoriety, in the markets +of the outer world. The former can give us an impression of +personal greatness such as the latter cannot.</p> +<p>With regard to the originality of Lord de Tabley’s work, +it is obvious that every poet must in some measure be influenced +by the <!-- page 234--><a name="page234"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 234</span>leading luminaries of his own +period. But at no time would it have been fair to call Lord +de Tabley an imitator; and in the new poems in this volume the +accent is, perhaps, more individual than was the accent of any of +his previous poetry. The general reader’s +comparatively slight acquaintance with Greek poetry may become +unfortunate for modern poets. Often and often it occurs +that a poet is charged with imitating another poet of a more +prominent position than his own when, as a matter of fact, both +poets have been yielding to the magic influence of some poet of +Greece. Such a yielding has been held to be legitimate in +every literature of the modern world. Indeed, to be +coloured by the great classics of Greek and Roman literature is +the inevitable destiny and the special glory of all the best +poetry of the modern world, as it is the inevitable destiny and +the special glory of the far-off waters of the Nile to be +enriched and toned by the far-off wealth of Ruwenzori and the +great fertilizing lakes from which they have sprung. But in +drawing from the eternal fountains of beauty Lord de +Tabley’s processes were not those of his great +contemporaries; they were very specially his own, as far removed +from the severe method of Matthew Arnold on the one hand as from +Tennyson’s method on the other.</p> +<p>His way of work was always to illustrate a story of Hellenic +myth by symbols and <!-- page 235--><a name="page235"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 235</span>analogies drawn not from the more +complex economies of a later world, as was Tennyson’s way, +but from that wide knowledge of the phenomena of nature which can +be attained only by a poet whose knowledge is that of the +naturalist. His devotion to certain departments of natural +science has been running parallel with his devotion to poetry, +and if learning is something wider than scholarship, he is the +most learned poet of his time. While Tennyson’s +knowledge of natural science, though wide, was gathered from +books, Lord de Tabley’s knowledge, especially in the +department of botany, is derived largely from original +observation and inquiry. And this knowledge enables him to +make his poetry alive with organic detail such as satisfies the +naturalist as fully as the other qualities in his works satisfy +the lover of poetry. The leading poem of the present +volume, ‘Orpheus in Hades,’ is full of a knowledge of +the ways of nature beyond the reach of most poets, and yet this +knowledge is kept well in governance by his artistic sense; it is +never obtruded—never more than hinted at, +indeed:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Soon, soon I saw the spectral vanguard come,<br /> +Coasting along, as swallows, beating low<br /> +Before a hint of rain. In buoyant air,<br /> +Circling thy poise, and hardly move the wing,<br /> +And rather float than fly. Then other spirits,<br /> +Shrill and more fierce, came wailing down the gale;<br /> +As plaintive plovers came with swoop and scream<br /> +<!-- page 236--><a name="page236"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +236</span>To lure our footsteps from their furrowy nest,<br /> +So these, as lapwing guardians, sailed and swung<br /> +To save the secrets of their gloomy lair.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>I hate to watch the flower set up its face.<br /> +I loathe the trembling shimmer of the sea,<br /> +Its heaving roods of intertangled weed<br /> +And orange sea-wrack with its necklace fruit;<br /> +The stale, insipid cadence of the dawn,<br /> +The ringdove, tedious harper on five tones,<br /> +The eternal havoc of the sodden leaves,<br /> +Rotting the floors of Autumn.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>‘The Death of Phaëthon’ is another poem in +which Lord de Tabley succeeds in mingling a true poetic energy +with that subtle dignity of utterance which can never really be +divorced from true poetry, whether the poet’s subject be +lofty or homely.</p> +<p>The line</p> +<blockquote><p>With sudden ray and music across the sea</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and the opening line of the poem,</p> +<blockquote><p>Before him the immeasurable heaven,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>cause us to think that Lord de Tabley has paid but little +attention to the question of elision in English poetry. In +the second of the lines above quoted elision is impossible, in +the first elision is demanded. The reason why elision is +sometimes demanded is that in certain lines, as in the one which +opens ‘Orpheus in Hades,’ the hiatus which occurs +when a word ending with a vowel is followed by a vowel beginning +the next word may be so great as to <!-- page 237--><a +name="page237"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 237</span>become +intolerable. The reason why elision is sometimes a merely +allowable beauty is that when a word ends with <i>w</i>, +<i>r</i>, or <i>l</i>, to elide the liquids is to secure a kind +of billowy music of a peculiarly delightful kind. Now +elision is very specially demanded in a line like that which +opens ‘Orpheus in Hades,’ where the pause of the line +fall upon <i>the</i>. To make the main pause of the line +fall upon <i>the</i> is extremely and painfully bad, even when +the next word begins with a consonant; but when the word +following <i>the</i> begins with a vowel, the line is absolutely +immetrical; it has, indeed, no more to do with English prosody +than with that prosody of Japan upon which Mr. Basil Chamberlain +discourses so pleasantly. On the other hand, the elision of +the second syllable of the word <i>music</i> in the other line +quoted above is equally faulty in another direction. But as +we said when reviewing Mr. Bridges’s treatise on +Milton’s prosody, nothing is more striking than the +helplessness of most recent poets when confronted with the simple +question of elision.</p> +<p>In an ‘Ode to a Star’ there is great beauty and +breadth of thought and expression. Its only structural +blemish, that of an opening stanza whose form is not distinctly +followed, can be so easily put right that it need only be +mentioned here in order to emphasize the canon that it is only in +irregular odes that variation of stanza is permissible. +Keats, no doubt, in <!-- page 238--><a name="page238"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 238</span>one at least of his unequalled odes, +does depart from the scheme of structure indicated by the opening +stanza, and without any apparent metrical need for so +doing. But the poem does not gain by the departure. +Besides, Keats is now a classic, and has a freedom in regard to +irregularities of metre which Lord de Tabley would be the last to +claim for himself. Another blemish of a minor kind in the +‘Ode to a Star’ is that of rhyming +“meteor” with “wheatear.”</p> +<p>If the poetry in Lord de Tabley’s volume answers as +little to Milton’s famous list of the poetic requirements, +“simple, sensuous, and passionate,” as does +Milton’s own poetry, which answers to only the second of +these demands, very high poetry might be cited which is neither +sensuous nor passionate. The so-called coldness displayed +by ‘Lycidas’ arises not, it may well be supposed, +from any lack on Milton’s part of sorrow for his friend, +but from his determination that simple he would not be, and yet +his method is justified of its own beauty and glory. Of +course poetry may be too ornate, but in demanding a simplicity of +utterance from the poet it is easy for the critic to forget how +wide and how various are poetry’s domains. For if in +one mood poetry is the simple and unadorned expression of nature, +in another it is the woof of art,</p> +<blockquote><p>Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes<br /> +As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damasked wings.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 239--><a name="page239"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +239</span>In the matter of poetic ornament, all that the reader +has any right to demand is that the decoration should be poetical +and not rhetorical. Now, as a matter of fact, there is no +surer sign of the amount of the poetical endowment of any poet +than the insight he shows into the nature of poetry as +distinguished from rhetoric when working on ornate poetry. +It is a serious impeachment of latter-day criticism that in very +many cases, perhaps in most cases, the plaudits given to the last +new “leading poet” of the hour are awarded to +“felicitous lines,” every felicity of which is +rhetorical and not poetical.</p> +<h2><!-- page 240--><a name="page240"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 240</span>VII. WILLIAM MORRIS.<br /> +1834–1896.</h2> +<h3>I.</h3> +<p>The news of the grave turn suddenly taken by William +Morris’s illness prepared the public for the still worse +news that was to follow.</p> +<p>The certificate of the immediate cause of death affirms it to +have been phthisis, but one would suppose that almost every vital +organ had become exhausted. Each time that I saw him he +declared, in answer to my inquiries, that he suffered no pain +whatever. And a comforting thought this is to us +all—that Morris suffered no pain. To Death himself we +may easily be reconciled—nay, we might even look upon him +as Nature’s final beneficence to all her children, if it +were not for the cruel means he so often employs in fulfilling +his inevitable mission. The thought that Morris’s +life had ended in the tragedy of pain—the thought that he +to whom work was sport and generosity the highest form of +enjoyment, suffered what some men suffer in shuffling off <!-- +page 241--><a name="page241"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +241</span>the mortal coil—would have been intolerable +almost. For among the thousand and one charms of the man, +this, perhaps, was the chief, that Nature had endowed him with an +enormous capacity of enjoyment, and that Circumstance, conspiring +with Nature, said to him, “Enjoy.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p240b.jpg"> +<img alt="William Morris" src="images/p240s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>Born in easy circumstances, though not to the degrading +trouble of wealth—cherishing as his sweetest possessions a +devoted wife and two daughters, each of them endowed with +intelligence so rare as to understand a genius such as +his—surrounded by friends, some of whom were among the +first men of our time, and most of whom were of the very salt of +the earth—it may be said of him that Misfortune, if she +touched him at all, never struck home. If it is true, as +Mérimée affirms, that men are hastened to maturity +by misfortune, who wanted Morris to be mature? Who wanted +him to be other than the radiant boy of genius that he remained +till the years had silvered his hair and carved wrinkles on his +brow, but left his blue-grey eyes as bright as when they first +opened on the world? Enough for us to think that the man +must, indeed, be specially beloved by the gods who in his +sixty-third year dies young. Old age Morris could not have +borne with patience. Pain would not have developed him into +a hero. This beloved man, who must have died some day, died +when his marvellous powers were at their best—and died <!-- +page 242--><a name="page242"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +242</span>without pain. The scheme of life and death does +not seem so much awry, after all.</p> +<p>At the last interview but one that ever I had with +him—it was in the little carpetless room from which so much +of his best work was turned out—he himself surprised me by +leading the conversation upon a subject he rarely chose to talk +about—the mystery of life and death. The conversation +ended with these words of his: “I have enjoyed my +life—few men more so—and death in any case is +sure.”</p> +<p>It is difficult not to think that the cause of causes of his +death was excessive exercise of all his forces, especially of the +imaginative faculty. When I talked to him, as I often did, +of the peril of such a life of tension as his, he pooh-poohed the +idea. “Look at Gladstone,” he would say; +“look at those wise owls your chancellors and your +judges. Don’t they live all the longer for +work? It is rust that kills men, not work.” No +doubt he was right in contending that in intellectual efforts +such as those he alluded to, where the only faculty drawn upon is +the “dry light of intelligence,” a prodigious amount +of work may be achieved without any sapping of the sources of +life. But is this so where that fusion of all the faculties +which we call genius is greatly taxed? I doubt it. In +all true imaginative production there is, as De Quincey pointed +out many years ago, a movement not of “the thinking +machine” only, but of the <!-- page 243--><a +name="page243"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 243</span>whole +man—the whole “genial” nature of the +worker—his imagination, his judgment, moving in an +evolution of lightning velocity from the whole of the work to the +part, from the part to the whole, together with every emotion of +the soul. Hence when, as in the case of Walter Scott, of +Charles Dickens, and presumably of Shakespeare too, the emotional +nature of Man is overtaxed, every part of the frame suffers, and +cries out in vain for its share of that nervous fluid which is +the true <i>vis vitæ</i>.</p> +<p>We have only to consider the sort of work Morris produced and +its amount to realize that no human powers could continue to +withstand such a strain. Many are of opinion that +‘The Lovers of Gudrun’ is his finest poem; he worked +at it from four o’clock in the morning till four in the +afternoon, and when he rose from the table he had produced 750 +lines! Think of the forces at work in producing a poem like +‘Sigurd.’ Think of the mingling of the drudgery +of the Dryasdust with the movements of an imaginative vision +unsurpassed in our time; think, I say, of the collaborating of +the ‘Völsunga Saga’ with the +‘Nibelungenlied,’ the choosing of this point from the +Saga-man, and of that point from the later poem of the Germans, +and then fusing the whole by imaginative heat into the greatest +epic of the nineteenth century. Was there not work enough +here for a considerable portion of a <!-- page 244--><a +name="page244"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +244</span>poet’s life? And yet so great is the entire +mass of his work that ‘Sigurd’ is positively +overlooked in many of the notices of his writings which have +appeared since his death in the press, while in the others it is +alluded to in three words, and this simply because the mass of +other matter to be dealt with fills up all the available space of +a newspaper.</p> +<p>Then, again, take his translation of the Odyssey. Some +competent critics are dissatisfied with this; yet in a certain +sense it is a triumph. The two specially Homeric +qualities—those, indeed, which set Homer apart from all +other poets—are eagerness and dignity. Never again +can they be fully combined, for never again will poetry be +written in the Greek hexameters and by a Homer. That +Tennyson could have given us the Homeric dignity his magnificent +rendering of a famous fragment of the Iliad shows. +Chapman’s translations show that the eagerness also can be +caught. Morris, of course, could not have given the dignity +of Homer, but then, while Tennyson has left us only a few lines +speaking with the dignity of the Iliad, Morris gave us a +translation of the entire Odyssey, which, though it missed the +Homeric dignity, secured the eagerness as completely as +Chapman’s free-and-easy paraphrase, and in a rendering as +literal as Buckley’s prose crib, which lay frankly by +Morris’s side as he wrote.</p> +<p><!-- page 245--><a name="page245"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +245</span>This, with his much less satisfactory translation of +Virgil, where he gives us an almost word-for-word translation, +and yet throws over the poem a glamour of romance which brings +Virgil into the sympathy of the modern reader, would have +occupied years with almost any other poet. But these two +efforts of his genius are swamped by the purely original poems, +such as ‘The Defence of Guenevere,’ +‘Jason,’ ‘The Earthly Paradise,’ +‘Love is Enough,’ ‘Poems by the Way,’ +&c. And then come his translations from the +Icelandic. Mere translation is, of course, easy enough, but +not such translation as that in the “Saga +Library.” Allowing for all the aid he got from Mr. +Magnússon, what a work this is! Think of the +imaginative exercise required to turn the language of these +Saga-men into a diction so picturesque and so concrete as to make +each Saga an English poem, for poem each one is, if Aristotle is +right in thinking that imaginative substance and not metre is the +first requisite of a poem.</p> +<p>And this brings me to those poems without metre which he +invented for himself in the latter portion of his career. +There is in these delightful stories, leaving out of +consideration the exquisite lyrics interspersed, enough poetic +wealth adequately to endow a dozen poets. The last of all +of them—the one of which the last two chapters, when he +could no longer <!-- page 246--><a name="page246"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 246</span>hold a pen, he dictated to his +friend Mr. Cockerell, in the determination, as he said to me, +that he would finish it before he died—will be found to be +finer than any hitherto published. It is called ‘The +Sundering Flood,’ and was written after the story +‘The Water of the Wondrous Isles.’ It +(‘The Sundering Flood’) is as long as ‘The Wood +beyond the World,’ but has lyrics interspersed.</p> +<p>But evidently it is as an inventor in the fine arts that he is +chiefly known to the general public. “Had he written +no poetry at all, he would have been as famous,” we are +told, “as he is now.” Anyhow, there is no +household of any culture among the English-speaking races in +which the name of William Morris does not at once call up that +great revival in decorative art for which the latter part of the +nineteenth century will be famous. In his designs for +tapestry and other textures, in his designs for wall-papers and +furniture, there is an expenditure of imaginative force which +alone might make the fame of an artist. Then his artistic +printing, in which he invented his own decorations, his own type, +and his own paper—think of the energy he put into all +that! The moment that this new interest seized him he made +a more thorough study of the various specimens of black-letter +printing than had ever been made before save by +specialists. But even this could not “fatigue an +appetite” <!-- page 247--><a name="page247"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 247</span>for the joy of work “which was +insatiable.” He started as an apostle of +Socialism. He edited <i>The Commonweal</i>, and wrote +largely in it, sank money in it week by week with the greatest +glee, stumped the country as a Socialist orator, and into that +cause alone put the energy of three men. Is it any wonder, +then, that those who loved him were appalled at this prodigious +output? Often and often have I tried to bring this matter +before him. It was all of no use. “For me to +rest from work,” he would say, “means to +die.”</p> +<p>When not absorbed in some occupation that he loved—and +in no other would he move—his restlessness was that of a +young animal. In conversation he could rarely sit still for +ten consecutive minutes, but must needs spring from his seat and +walk round the room, as if every limb were eager to take part in +the talk. His boisterous restlessness was the first thing +that struck strangers. During the period when the famous +partnership of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. was being +dissolved I saw him very frequently at Queen’s Square, for +I took a very active part in the arrangement of that matter, and +after our interviews at Queen Square he and I used often to lunch +together at the “Cock” in Fleet Street. He +liked a sanded floor and quaint old-fashioned settles. +Moreover, the chops were the finest to be had in London.</p> +<p><!-- page 248--><a name="page248"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +248</span>On the day following our first forgathering at the +“Cock,” I was lunching there with another +poet—a friend of his—when the waiter, who knew me +well, said, “That was a loudish gent a-lunching with you +yesterday, sir. I thought once you was a-coming to +blows.” Morris had merely been declaiming against the +Elizabethan dramatists, especially Cyril Tourneur. He +shouted out, “You ought to know better than to claim any +merit for such work as ‘The Atheist’s +Tragedy’”; and wound up with the generalization that +“the use of blank verse as a poetic medium ought to be +stopped by Act of Parliament for at least two +generations.” On another occasion, when Middleton +(another fine spirit, who “should have died +hereafter”) and I were staying with him at Kelmscott Manor, +the passionate emphasis with which he declared that the curse of +mankind was civilization, and that Australia ought to have been +left to the blacks, New Zealand to the Maoris, and South Africa +to the Kaffirs, startled even Middleton, who knew him so +well.</p> +<p>It was this boisterous energy and infinite enjoyment of life +which made it so difficult for people on meeting him for the +first time to associate him with the sweet sadness of ‘The +Earthly Paradise.’ How could a man of such exuberant +animal spirits as Morris—so hearty, so noisy often, and +often so humorous—have written those lovely poems, whose +only fault <!-- page 249--><a name="page249"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 249</span>was an occasional languor and a lack +of humour often commented on when the critic compares him with +Chaucer? This subject of Chaucer’s humour and +Morris’s lack of it demands, however, a special word even +in so brief a notice as this. No man of our time—not +even Rossetti—had a finer appreciation of humour than +Morris, as is well known to those who heard him read aloud the +famous “Rainbow Scene” in ‘Silas Marner’ +and certain passages in Charles Dickens’s novels. +These readings were as fine as Rossetti’s recitations of +‘Jim Bludso’ and other specimens of Yankee +humour. And yet it is a common remark, and one that cannot +be gainsaid, that there is no spark of humour in the published +poems of either of these two friends. Did it never occur to +any critic to ask whether the anomaly was not explicable by some +theory of poetic art that they held in common? It is no +disparagement to say of Morris that when he began to write poetry +the influence of Rossetti’s canons of criticism upon him +was enormous, notwithstanding the influence upon him of +Browning’s dramatic methods. But while +Rossetti’s admiration of Browning was very strong, it was a +canon of his criticism that humour was, if not out of place in +poetry, a disturbing element of it.</p> +<p>What makes me think that Morris was greatly influenced by this +canon is the fact that Morris could and did write humorous +poetry, and then <!-- page 250--><a name="page250"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 250</span>withheld it from publication. +For the splendid poem of ‘Sir Peter Harpdon’s +End,’ printed in his first volume, Morris wrote a humorous +scene of the highest order, in which the hero said to his +faithful fellow captive and follower John Curzon that as their +deaths were so near he felt a sudden interest in what had never +interested him before—the story of John’s life before +they had been brought so close to each other. The heroic +but dull-witted soldier acceded to his master’s request, +and the incoherent, muddle-headed way in which he gave his +autobiography was full of a dramatic and subtle humour—was +almost worthy of him who in three or four words created the +foolish fat scullion in ‘Tristram Shandy.’ This +he refused to print, in deference, I suspect, to a theory of +poetic art.</p> +<p>In criticizing Morris, however, the critic is apt to forget +that among poets there are those who, treating poetry simply as +an art, do not press into their work any more of their own +individual forces than the work artistically demands, while +another class of poets are impelled to give full expression to +themselves in every poem they write. It is to the former +class of poets that Morris belongs.</p> +<p>Whatever chanced to be Morris’s goal of the moment was +pursued by him with as much intensity as though the universe +contained no other possible goal, and then, when the moment <!-- +page 251--><a name="page251"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +251</span>was passed, another goal received all his +attention. I was never more struck with this than on the +memorable day when I first met him, and was blessed with a +friendship that lasted without interruption for nearly a quarter +of a century. It was shortly after he and Rossetti entered +upon the joint occupancy of Kelmscott Manor on the Thames, where +I was staying as Rossetti’s guest. On a certain +morning when we were walking in the fields Rossetti told me that +Morris was coming down for a day’s fishing with George +Hake, and that “Mouse,” the Icelandic pony, was to be +sent to the Lechlade railway station to meet them. +“You are now going to be introduced to my fellow +partner,” Rossetti said. At that time I only knew of +the famous firm by name, and I asked Rossetti for an explanation, +which he gave in his usual incisive way.</p> +<p>“Well,” said he, “one evening a lot of us +were together, and we got talking about the way in which artists +did all kinds of things in olden times, designed every kind of +decoration and most kinds of furniture, and some one +suggested—as a joke more than anything else—that we +should each put down five pounds and form a company. Fivers +were blossoms of a rare growth among us in those days, and I +won’t swear that the table bristled with fivers. +Anyhow, the firm was formed, but of course there was no deed, or +anything of that kind. In fact, <!-- page 252--><a +name="page252"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 252</span>it was a +mere playing at business, and Morris was elected manager, not +because we ever dreamed he would turn out a man of business, but +because he was the only one among us who had both time and money +to spare. We had no idea whatever of commercial success, +but it succeeded almost in our own despite. Here comes the +manager. You must mind your <i>p’s</i> and +<i>q’s</i> with him; he is a wonderfully stand-off chap, +and generally manages to take against people.”</p> +<p>“What is he like?” I said.</p> +<p>“You know the portraits of Francis I. Well, take +that portrait as the basis of what you would call in your +metaphysical jargon your ‘mental image’ of the +manager’s face, soften down the nose a bit, and give him +the rose-bloom colour of an English farmer, and there you have +him.”</p> +<p>“What about Francis’s eyes?” I said.</p> +<p>“Well, they are not quite so small, but not +big—blue-grey, but full of genius.”</p> +<p>And then I saw, coming towards us on a rough pony so +diminutive that he well deserved the name of “Mouse,” +the figure of a man in a wideawake—a figure so broad and +square that the breeze at his back, soft and balmy as it was, +seemed to be using him as a sail, and blowing both him and the +pony towards us.</p> +<p>When Rossetti introduced me, the manager greeted him with a +“H’m! I thought you were <!-- page 253--><a +name="page253"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +253</span>alone.” This did not seem promising. +Morris at that time was as proverbial for his exclusiveness as he +afterwards became for his expansiveness.</p> +<p>Rossetti, however, was irresistible to everybody, and +especially to Morris, who saw that he was expected to be +agreeable to me, and most agreeable he was, though for at least +an hour I could still see the shy look in the corner of his +eyes. He invited me to join the fishing, which I did. +Finding every faculty of Morris’s mind and every nerve in +his body occupied with one subject, fishing, I (coached by +Rossetti, who warned me not to talk about ‘The Defence of +Guenevere’) talked about nothing but the bream, roach, +dace, and gudgeon I used to catch as a boy in the Ouse, and the +baits that used to tempt the victims to their doom. Not one +word passed Morris’s lips, as far as I remember at this +distance of time, which had not some relation to fish and +baits. He had come from London for a few hours’ +fishing, and all the other interests which as soon as he got back +to Queen’s Square would be absorbing him were +forgotten. Instead of watching my float, I could not help +watching his face with an amused interest at its absorbed +expression, which after a while he began to notice, and the +following little dialogue ensued, which I remember as though it +took place yesterday:—</p> +<p>“How old were you when you used to fish in the +Ouse?”</p> +<p><!-- page 254--><a name="page254"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +254</span>“Oh, all sorts of ages; it was at all sorts of +times, you know.”</p> +<p>“Well, how young then?”</p> +<p>“Say ten or twelve.”</p> +<p>“When you got a bite at ten or twelve, did you get as +interested, as excited, as I get when I see my float +bob?”</p> +<p>“No.”</p> +<p>The way in which he said, “I thought not,” +conveyed a world of disparagement of me as a man who could care +to gaze upon a brother angler instead of upon his own float.</p> +<h3><!-- page 255--><a name="page255"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 255</span>II.</h3> +<p>In whatsoever William Morris does or says the hand or the +voice of the poet is seen or heard: in his house decorations no +less than in his epics, in his illuminated manuscripts no less +than in his tapestries, in his philippics against +“restoration” no less than in his sage-greens, in his +socialism no less than in his samplers. And first a word as +to his poetry. Any critic who, having for contemporaries +such writers as Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, and William +Morris, fails to see that he lives in a period of great poets may +rest assured that he is a critic born—may rest assured that +had he lived in the days of the Elizabethans he would have joined +the author of ‘The Returne from Parnassus’ in +despising the unacademic author of ‘Hamlet’ and +‘Lear.’ Among this band of great contemporary +poets what is the special position held by him who, having set +his triumphant hand to everything from the sampler up to the +epic, has now, by way of recreation, or rather by way of opening +a necessary safety-valve to ease his restless energies, invented +a system of poetic socialism and expounded it in a brand-new kind +of prose fiction?</p> +<p><!-- page 256--><a name="page256"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +256</span>A special and peculiar position Morris holds among his +peers—on that we are all agreed; but what is that +position? We must not talk too familiarly about the +Olympian gods; but is it that, without being the greatest where +all are great, Morris is the one who on all occasions produces +pure poetry and nothing else? Without affirming that it is +so, we may at least ask the question. If other poets of our +time show more intellectual strength than he, are they, +perchance, given sometimes to adulterating their poetry with +ratiocination and didactic preachments such as were better left +to the proseman? Without affirming that it is so, we may at +least ask the question. If other poets of our time can +reach a finer frenzy than he and give it voice with a more +melodious throat, are they, perchance, apt to forget that +“eloquence is heard while poetry is overheard”? +Without affirming that it is so, we may at least ask the +question. If others, again, are more picturesque than he +(though these it might be difficult to find), are they, +perchance, a little too self-conscious in their word-pictures, +and are they, perchance, apt to pass into those flowery but +uncertain ways that were first discovered by Euphues? +Without affirming that it is so, we may at least ask the +question.</p> +<p>But supposing that we really had to affirm all these things +about the other Olympians, where then would be the position of +him about whose <!-- page 257--><a name="page257"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 257</span>work such questions could not even +be asked? Where would then be the place of him who never +passes into ratiocination or rhetoric, never passes into +excessive word-painting or into euphuism, never speaks so loud as +to be heard rather than overheard, but, on the contrary, gives us +always clear and simple pictures, and always in musical +language? Where would then be the place of him who is the +very ideal, if not of the poet as <i>vates</i>, yet of the poet +as “maker”—the poet who always looks out upon +life through a poetic atmosphere which, if sometimes more +attenuated than suits some readers, is as simple and as clear as +the air of a May morning? A question which would be +variously answered according to the various temperaments of those +who answer—of those who define poetry to be +“making,” or those who define it to be +“prophesying,” or those who define it to be +“singing.”</p> +<p>Exception has, no doubt, been taken to certain archaisms in +which Morris indulges not only in the epic of +‘Sigurd,’ but also, and in a greater degree, in his +translations, especially in that rendering of the Odyssey. +It is not our business here to examine into the merits and +demerits of Morris as a translator; but if it were, this is what +we should say on his behalf. While admitting that now and +again his diction is a little too Scandinavian to be in colour, +we should point to Matthew Arnold’s <!-- page 258--><a +name="page258"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 258</span>dictum that +in a versified translation a poet is no longer recognizable, and +then we should ask whether it is given to any man in any kind of +diction to translate Homer. One Homeric quality only can +any one translator secure, it seems; and if he can secure one, is +not his partial failure better than success in less ambitious +efforts? To Chapman it was given to secure in the Iliad a +measure of the Homeric eagerness—but what else? To +Tennyson (in one wonderful fragment) it was given to secure a +measure of the Homeric dignity and also a measure of the Homeric +picture—but what else? There was still left one of +the three supreme Homeric qualities—the very quality which +no one ever supposed could be secured for our literature, or, +indeed, for any other—Homer’s quality of +<i>naïf</i> wonder. There is no witchery of Homer so +fascinating as this; and did any one suppose that it could ever +be caught by any translator? And could it ever have been +caught had not Nature in one of her happiest moods bethought +herself of evolving, in a late and empty day, the industrious +tapestry weaver of Merton and idle singer of +‘Sigurd,’ ‘The Earthly Paradise,’ +‘Love is Enough,’ and ten thousand delightful verses +besides?</p> +<p>But can a writer be called <i>naïf</i> who works in a +diction belonging rather to a past age than to his own? +Morris has proved that he could. Imagination is the basis +upon which all other <!-- page 259--><a name="page259"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 259</span>human faculties rest. In the +deep sense, indeed, one possession only have we “fools of +nature,” our imagination. What we fondly take for +substance is the very shadow; what we fondly take for shadow is +the very substance. And day by day is Science herself +endorsing more emphatically than ever Hamlet’s dictum, that +“there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it +so.” By the aid of imagination our souls confront the +present, and, as a rule, the present only. But Morris is an +instance, and not a solitary one, of a modern writer’s +inhaling so naturally the atmosphere of the particular past +period his imagination delights in as to belong spiritually to +that period rather than his own. To deny sincerity of +accent to Morris because of his love of the simple old +Scandinavian note—the note which to him represents every +other kind of primitive simplicity—would be as uncritical +as to deny sincerity of accent to Charles Lamb because of his +sympathy with Elizabethan and Jacobean times, or to Dante +Rossetti because of his sympathy with the period of his great +Italian namesake.</p> +<p>So much for the poetry of our many-handed poet. As to +his house decorations, his illuminated manuscripts, his +“anti-scrape” philippics, his sage-greens, his +tapestries, his socialism, and his samplers: to deal with the +infinite is far beyond the scope of an article so <!-- page +260--><a name="page260"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +260</span>very finite as this, or we could easily show that in +them all there is seen the same <i>naïf</i> genius of the +poet, the same rare instinct for beautiful expression, the same +originality as in the epics and the translations. Let him +who is rash enough to suppose that even the socialism of a great +poet is like the socialism of common folk read ‘John +Ball.’ Let him observe how like Titania floating and +dancing and playing among the Athenian clowns seems the Morrisian +genius floating and dancing and playing among the surroundings in +which at present it pleases him to disport. What makes the +ordinary socialistic literature to many people unreadable is its +sourness. What the Socialists say may be true, but their +way of saying it sets one’s teeth on edge. They +contrive to state their case with so much bitterness, with so +much unfairness—so much lack of logic—that the +listener says at once, “For me, <i>any</i> galley but +this! Things <i>are</i> bad; but, for Heaven’s sake, +let us go on as we are!”</p> +<p>By the clever competition of organisms did Nature, long before +socialism was thought of, contrive to build up a world—this +makeshift world. By the teeth of her very cats did she +evolve her succulent clover. But whether the Socialists are +therefore wrong in their views of society and its ultimate goal +is not a question we need discuss. What they want is more +knowledge and less zeal. It is <!-- page 261--><a +name="page261"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 261</span>possible to +see, and see clearly, that the social organism is far from being +what it ought to be, and at the same time to remember that man is +a creature of slow growth, and that even in reaching his present +modest stage of development the time he required was +long—long indeed unless we consider his history in relation +to the history of the earth, and then he appears to have been +very commendably expeditious. If there is any truth in what +the geologists tell us of the vast age of the earth, it seems +only a few years ago that man succeeded, after much heroic +sitting down, in wearing off an appendage which had done him good +service in his early tree-climbing days, but which, with new +environments and with trousers in prospect, had ceased to be +useful or ornamental. An anthropoid Socialist would have +advised him to “cut it off,” and had he done so he +would have bled to death.</p> +<p>That among all her children Man is really Nature’s prime +favourite seems pretty evident, though no one can say why. +It is to him that the Great Mother is ever pointing and saying, +“A poor creature, but mine own. I shall do something +with him some day, but I must not try to force him.” +Here, indeed, is the mistake of the Socialists. They think +they can force the very creature who above all others cannot be +forced. They think they can turn him into something rich +and strange—turn him in a <!-- page 262--><a +name="page262"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 262</span>single +generation—even as certain ingenious experimentalists +turned what Nature meant for a land-salamander into a +water-salamander, with new rudder-tail and gills instead of lungs +and feet suppressed, by feeding him with water animals in +oxygenated water and cajoling his functions. Competition, +that evolved Shakespeare from an ascidian, may be a mistake of +Nature’s—M. Arsène Houssaye declares that she +never was so wise and artistically perfect as we take her to +be—but her mistakes are too old to be rectified in a single +generation. A little more knowledge, we say, and a little +less zeal would save the Socialist from being considered by the +advanced thinker—who, studying the present by the light of +the past, sees that all civilization is provisional—as the +most serious obstructive whom he has to encounter.</p> +<p>As to Morris, we have always felt that, take him all round, he +is the richest and most varied in artistic endowments of any man +of our time. On whichsoever of the fine arts he had chanced +to concentrate his gifts and energies the result would have been +the same as in poetry. In the front rank he would always +have been. But it is not until we come to deal with his +socialism that we see how entirely aestheticism is the primal +source from which all his energies spring. That he has a +great and generous heart—a heart that must needs sympathize +with every form of distress—no one can doubt who <!-- page +263--><a name="page263"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +263</span>reads these two books, <a name="citation263"></a><a +href="#footnote263" class="citation">[263]</a> and yet his +socialism comes from an entirely æsthetic impulse. It +is the vulgarities of civilization, it is the ugliness of +contemporary life—so unlike that Earthly Paradise of the +poetic dream—that have driven him from his natural and +proper work. He cannot take offence at our saying this, for +he has said it himself in ‘Signs of +Change’:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“As I strove to stir up people to this +reform, I found that the causes of the vulgarities of +civilization lay deeper than I had thought, and little by little +I was driven to the conclusion that all these uglinesses are but +the outward expression of the innate moral baseness into which we +are forced by our present form of society, and that it is futile +to attempt to deal with them from the outside. Whatever I +have written, or spoken on the platform, on these social subjects +is the result of the truths of socialism meeting my earlier +impulse, and giving it a definite and much more serious aim; and +I can only hope, in conclusion, that any of my readers who have +found themselves hard-pressed by the sordidness of civilization, +and have not known where to turn to for encouragement, may +receive the same enlightenment as I have, and that even the rough +pieces in this book may help them to that end.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>With these eloquent words no one can more fully agree than we +do, so far as they relate to the unloveliness of Philistine +rule. But <!-- page 264--><a name="page264"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 264</span>though the bad features of the +present time <a name="citation264"></a><a href="#footnote264" +class="citation">[264]</a> are peculiar to itself, when were +those paradisal days of which Morris dreams? when did that merry +England exist in which the general sum of human happiness and +human misery was more equally distributed than now?</p> +<p>Those “dark ages” beloved of the author of +‘John Ball’ may not have been quite so dark as +Swinburne declares them to have been; but in this matter of the +equalization of human happiness were they so very far in advance +of the present time? Those who have watched the progress of +Morris’s socialism know that, so far from being out of +keeping with the “anti-scrape” philippics and the +tapestry weaving, it is in entire harmony with them. Out of +a noble anger against the “jerry builder” and his +detestable doings sprang this the last of the Morrisian epics, as +out of the wrath of Achilles sprang the Iliad. That the +picturesqueness of the John Ball period should lead captive the +imagination of Morris was, of course, inevitable. Society +is at least picturesque wheresoever the classes are so sharply +demarcated as they were in the dark ages, when the difference as +to quality of flesh and blood between the lord and the thrall was +greater than the difference between the thrall and the swine he +tended. But what about the condition of this same +picturesque thrall who (as the law books have it) <!-- page +265--><a name="page265"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +265</span>“clothed the soil”—whose every chance +of happiness, whose every chance of comfort, depended upon the +arbitrary will of some more or less brutal lord? What was +the condition of the English lower orders—the orders for +whom many bitter social tears are now being shed? What +about the condition of the thralls in dark ages so dark that even +an apostle of Wyclif’s (this same John Ball, Morris’s +hero) preached the doctrine—unless he has been +belied—that no child had a soul that could be saved who had +been born out of wedlock? The Persian aphorism that warns +us to beware of poets, princes, and women must have had a +satirical reference to the fact that their governance of the +world is by means of picturesqueness. Always it has been +the picturesqueness of tyranny that has kept it up. It was +the picturesqueness of the <i>auto de fe</i> that kept up the +Spanish Inquisition, but we may rest assured that the most +picturesque actors in that striking tableau would have preferred +a colourless time of jerry builders to a picturesqueness like +that. To find a fourteenth-century pothouse parlour painted +by a modern Socialist with a hand more loving than Walter +Scott’s own is indeed touching:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“I entered the door and started at first +with my old astonishment, with which I had woke up, so strange +and beautiful did this interior seem to me, though it was but a +pothouse <!-- page 266--><a name="page266"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 266</span>parlour. A quaintly carved +sideboard held an array of bright pewter pots and dishes and +wooden and earthen bowls; a stout oak table went up and down the +room, and a carved oak chair stood by the chimney-corner, now +filled by a very old man dim-eyed and white-bearded. That, +except the rough stools and benches on which the company sat, was +all the furniture. The walls were panelled roughly enough +with oak boards to about six feet from the floor, and about three +feet of plaster above that was wrought in a pattern of a rose +stem running all round the room, freely and roughly done, but +with (as it seemed to my unused eyes) wonderful skill and +spirit. On the hood of the great chimney a huge rose was +wrought in the plaster and brightly painted in its proper +colours. There were a dozen or more of the men I had seen +coming along the street sitting there, some eating and all +drinking; their cased bows leaned against the wall, their quivers +hung on pegs in the panelling, and in a corner of the room I saw +half a dozen bill-hooks that looked made more for war than for +hedge-shearing, with ashen handles some seven foot long. +Three or four children were running about among the legs of the +men, heeding them mighty little in their bold play, and the men +seemed little troubled by it, although they were talking +earnestly and seriously too. A well-made comely girl leaned +up against the chimney close to the gaffer’s chair, and +seemed to be in waiting on the company: she was clad in a +close-fitting gown of bright blue cloth, with a broad silver +girdle, daintily wrought, round her loins, a rose <!-- page +267--><a name="page267"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +267</span>wreath was on her head, and her hair hung down unbound; +the gaffer grumbled a few words to her from time to time, so that +I judged he was her grandfather.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“Morris’s ‘Earthly Paradise’!” +the reader will exclaim. Yes; and here we come upon that +feature of originality which, as has been before said, +distinguishes Morris’s socialism from the socialism of the +prosaic reformer.</p> +<p>Political opinions almost always spring from +temperament. The conservative temper of such a poet as Sir +Walter Scott leads him to idealize the past, and to concern +himself but little about the future. The rebellious +temperament of such a poet as Shelley leads him to idealize the +future, and concern himself but little about the past. But +by contriving to idealize both the past and the future, and +mixing the two idealizations into one delicious amalgam, the poet +of the ‘Earthly Paradise’ gives us the Morrisian +socialism, the most charming, and in many respects the most +marvellous product of “the poet’s mind” that +has ever yet been presented to an admiring world.</p> +<p>The plan of ‘John Ball’ is simplicity +itself. The poet in a dream becomes a spectator of the +insurrection of the Kentish men at the time when Wat Tyler +rebelled against the powers that were; and the hero, John Ball, +who is mainly famous as having preached a sermon from the +text</p> +<blockquote><p>Wan Adam dalf and Eve span<br /> +Wo was thanne a gentilman?</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 268--><a name="page268"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +268</span>is made to listen to the poet-dreamer’s prophecy +of the days of <i>bourgeois</i> rule and the jerry builder.</p> +<p>If we take into account the perfect truth and beauty of the +literary form in which the story is presented, we do not believe +that anything to surpass it could be found in historic fiction; +indeed, we do not know that anything could be found to equal +it. The difficulty of the imaginative writer who attempts, +whether in prose or verse, to vivify the past seems to be +increasing, as we have before said, every day with the growth of +the scientific temper and the reverence of the sacredness of mere +documents. The old-fashioned theory—the theory which +obtained from Shakespeare’s time down to Scott’s and +even down to Kingsley’s—that the facts of history +could be manipulated for artistic purposes with the same freedom +that the artist’s own inventions can be handled, gave the +artist power to produce vital and flexible work at the expense of +the historic conscience—a power which is being curtailed +day by day. The instinct for vivifying by imaginative +treatment the records of the past is too universal and too deeply +inwoven in the very texture of the human mind to be other than a +true and healthy instinct. But so oppressive has become the +tyranny of documents, so fettered by what a humourist has called +“factology” have become the wings of the +romancer’s imagination, that <!-- page 269--><a +name="page269"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 269</span>one wonders +at his courage in dealing with historic subjects at all.</p> +<p>A bold writer would he be who in the present day should make +Shakespeare figure among the Kenilworth festivities as a famous +player (after the manner of Scott), or who should (after the +manner of Kingsley) give Elizabeth credit for Winter’s +device of using the fire-ships before Calais. Even the +poet—he who, dealing as he does with essential and +elemental qualities only, is not so hampered as the proseman in +these matters—is beginning also to feel the tyranny of +documents, as we see notably in Swinburne’s +‘Bothwell,’ which consists very largely of documents +transfigured into splendid verse. But more than even this: +the mere literary form has now to be as true to the time depicted +as circumstances will allow. If Scott’s romances have +a fault it is that, as he had no command over, and perhaps but +little sympathy with, the beautiful old English of which Morris +is such a master, his stories lack one important element of +dramatic illusion. But it is in the literary form of his +story that Morris is especially successful. Where time has +dealt most cruelly with our beloved language is in robbing it of +that beautiful cadence which fell from our forefathers’ +lips as sweetly and as unconsciously as melody falls from the +throat of the mavis. One of the many advantages that Morris +has reaped from his peculiar line of study is that he can <!-- +page 270--><a name="page270"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +270</span>write like this—he, and he alone among living +men:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“‘Surely thou goest to thy +death.’ He smiled very sweetly, yet proudly, as he +said: ‘Yea, the road is long, but the end cometh at +last. Friend, many a day have I been dying; for my sister, +with whom I have played and been merry in the autumntide about +the edges of the stubble-fields; and we gathered the nuts and +bramble-berries there, and started thence the missel-thrush, and +wondered at his voice and thought him big; and the sparrow-hawk +wheeled and turned over the hedges, and the weasel ran across the +path, and the sound of the sheep-bells came to us from the downs +as we sat happy on the grass; and she is dead and gone from the +earth, for she pined from famine after the years of the great +sickness; and my brother was slain in the French wars, and none +thanked him for dying save he that stripped him of his gear; and +my unwedded wife with whom I dwelt in love after I had taken the +tonsure, and all men said she was good and fair, and true she was +and lovely; she also is dead and gone from the earth; and why +should I abide save for the deeds of the flesh which must be +done? Truly, friend, this is but an old tale that men must +die; and I will tell thee another, to wit, that they live: and I +live now and shall live. Tell me then what shall +befall.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Note the music of the cadence here—a music that plays +about the heart more sweetly than any verse, save the very +highest. And here we touch upon an extremely interesting +subject.</p> +<p><!-- page 271--><a name="page271"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +271</span>Always in reading a prose story by a writer whose +energies have been exercised in other departments of letters +there is for the critic a special interest. If this +exercise has been in fields outside imaginative +literature—in those fields of philosophical speculation +where a logical method and a scientific modulation of sentences +are required—the novelist, instead of presenting us with +those concrete pictures of human life demanded in all imaginative +art, is apt to give us disquisitions “about and +about” human life. Forgetting that it is not the +function of any art to prove, he is apt to concern himself deeply +in showing why his actors did and said this or that—apt to +busy himself about proving his story either by subtle analyses or +else by purely scientific generalizations, instead of attending +to the true method of convincement that belongs to his +art—the convincement that is effected by actual pictorial +and dramatic illustration of how his actors really did the things +and said the things vouched for by his own imagination. +That the quest of a scientific, or supposed scientific, basis for +a novelist’s imaginative structure is fatal to true art is +seen not only in George Eliot and the accomplished author of +‘Elsie Venner,’ but also in writers of another +kind—writers whose hands cannot possibly have been +stiffened by their knowledge of science.</p> +<p>Among the many instances that occur to us <!-- page 272--><a +name="page272"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 272</span>we need +point to only one, that of a story recently published by one of +our most successful living novelists, in which the writer +endeavours to prove that animal magnetism is the acting cause of +spiritualistic manifestations so called. Setting out to +show that a medium is nothing more than a powerful mesmerist, to +whose manipulations all but two in a certain household are +unconsciously succumbing, he soon ignores for plot purposes the +nature of the dramatic situation by making those very two +sceptics at a séance hear the same music, see the same +spiritually conveyed newspaper, as the others hear and see. +That the writer should mistake, as he seems to do, the merely +directive force of magnetism for a motive force does not concern +the literary critic. But when two sceptics, who are to +expose a charlatan’s tricks by watching how the believers +are succumbing to mesmeric hallucinations, are found succumbing +to the same hallucinations themselves—succumbing because +the story-teller needs them as witnesses of the +phenomena—then the literary critic grows pensive, for he +sees what havoc the scientific method will work in the +flower-garden of art.</p> +<p>On the other hand, should the story-teller be a poet—one +who, like the writer of ‘John Ball,’ has been +accustomed to write under the conditions of a form of literary +art where the diction is always and necessarily concrete, <!-- +page 273--><a name="page273"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +273</span>figurative, and quintessential, and where the movement +is metrical—his danger lies in a very different +direction. The critic’s interest then lies in +watching how the poet will comport himself in another field of +imaginative literature—a field where no such conditions as +these exist—a field where quintessential and concrete +diction, though meritorious, may yet be carried too far, and +where those regular and expected bars of the metricist which are +the first requisites of verse are not only without function, but +are in the way—are fatal, indeed, to that kind of +convincement which, and which alone, is the proper quest of prose +art. No doubt it is true, as we have before said, that +literature being nothing but the reflex of the life of man, or +else of the life of nature, the final quest of every form of +literature is that special kind of convincement which is +inherently suitable to the special form. For the analogy +between nature and true art is not a fanciful one, and the +relation of function to organism is the same in both. But +what is the difference between the convincement achieved by +poetic and the convincement achieved by prose art? Is it +that the convincement of him who works in poetic forms is, though +not necessarily, yet most perfectly achieved by a faithful record +of the emotion aroused in his own soul by the impact upon his +senses of the external world, while the convincement of the +proseman is, though not <!-- page 274--><a +name="page274"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +274</span>necessarily, yet most perfectly achieved by a faithful +record and picture of the external world itself?</p> +<p>All such generalizations as this are, no doubt, to be taken +with many and great qualifications; but, roughly speaking, would +not this seem to be the fundamental difference between that kind +of imaginative literature which expresses itself in metrical +forms and that kind of imaginative literature in which metrical +form is replaced by other qualities and other functions? +Not but that these two methods may meet in the same work, not but +that they may meet and strengthen each other, as we have before +said when glancing at the interesting question, How much, or how +little, of realism can poetry capture from the world of prose and +weave into her magic woof, and how much of music can prose steal +from poetry? But in order to do all that can be done in the +way of enriching poetry with prose material without missing the +convincement of poetic art, the poet must be Homer himself; in +order to do all that can be done in the way of vivifying prose +fiction with poetic fire without missing the convincement of +prose art, the story-teller must be Charlotte Brontë or +Emily, her sister, in whose work we find for once the +quintessential strength and the concrete and figurative diction +of the poet—indeed, all the poetical requisites save metre +alone. Had ‘Jane Eyre,’ ‘Villette,’ +and ‘Wuthering <!-- page 275--><a name="page275"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 275</span>Heights’ existed in +Coleridge’s time he would, we may be sure, have taken these +three prose poems as illustrations of the truth of his axiom that +the true antithesis of poetry is not prose, but science.</p> +<p>What the prose poet has to avoid is metrical movement on the +one side and scientific modulation of sentences on the +other. And perhaps in no case can it be achieved save in +the autobiographic form of fiction, where and where alone the +work is so subjective that it may bear even the poetic glow of +‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Villette.’ What +makes us think this to be so is the fact that in +‘Shirley’—a story written in the epic +method—the only passages of the poetic kind which really +convince are those uttered by the characters in their own +persons. And as to ‘Wuthering Heights,’ a story +which could not, of course, be told in one autobiography, the +method of telling it by means of a group of autobiographies, +though clumsy enough from the constructor’s point, was yet +just as effective as a more artistic method. And it was +true instinct of genius that led Emily Brontë to adopt the +autobiographic method even under these heavy conditions.</p> +<p>Still the general truth remains that the primary function of +the poet is to tell his story steeped in his own emotion, while +the primary function of the prose fictionist is to tell his story +in an objective way. Hence it <!-- page 276--><a +name="page276"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 276</span>is that in +a general way the difficulty of the poet who turns to prose +fiction lies, like that of philosophical or scientific writers, +in suppressing certain intellectual functions which he has been +in the habit of exercising. And the case of Scott, which at +first sight might seem to show against this theory, may be +adduced in support of it. For Scott’s versified +diction, though concrete, is never more quintessential than that +of prose; and his method being always objective rather than +subjective, when he turned to prose fiction he seemed at once to +be writing with his right hand where formerly he had been writing +with his left.</p> +<h2><!-- page 277--><a name="page277"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 277</span>VIII. FRANCIS HINDES +GROOME.<br /> +(THE TARNO RYE.)<br /> +1851–1902.</h2> +<h3>I.</h3> +<p>I have been invited to write about my late friend and +colleague Francis Hindes Groome, who died on the 24th ult., and +was buried among his forefathers at Monk Soham in Suffolk. +I find the task extremely difficult. Though he died at +fifty, he, with the single exception of Borrow, had lived more +than any other friend of mine, and perhaps suffered more. +Indeed, his was one of the most remarkable and romantic literary +lives that, since Borrow’s, have been lived in my time.</p> +<p>The son of an Archdeacon of Suffolk, he was born in 1851 at +Monk Soham Rectory, where, I believe, his father and his +grandfather were born, and where they certainly lived; +for—as has been recorded in one of the invaluable registry +books of my friend Mr. F. A. Crisp—he belonged to one of +the oldest and most distinguished families in Suffolk. He +was sent early to Ipswich School, where he was a very popular +boy, but never <!-- page 278--><a name="page278"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 278</span>strong and never fond of athletic +exercises. His early taste for literature is shown by the +fact that with his boy friend Henry Elliot Maiden he originated a +school magazine called the <i>Elizabethan</i>. Like many an +organ originated in the outer world, the <i>Elizabethan</i> +failed because it would not, or could not, bring itself into +harmony with the public taste. The boys wanted news of +cricket and other games: Groome and his assistant editor gave +them literature as far as it was in their power to do so.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p278b.jpg"> +<img alt="Francis Hindes Groome" src="images/p278s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The Ipswich School was a very good one for those who got into +the sixth, as Groome did. The head master, Dr. Holden, was +a very fine scholar; and it is no wonder that Groome throughout +his life showed a considerable knowledge of and interest in +classical literature. That he had a real insight into the +structure of Latin verse is seen by a rendering of +Tennyson’s ‘Tithonus,’ which Mr. Maiden has +been so very good as to show me—a rendering for which he +got a prize. In 1869 he got prizes for classical +literature, Latin prose, Latin elegiacs, and Latin +hexameters. But if Dr. Holden exercised much influence over +Groome’s taste, the assistant master, Mr. Sanderson, +certainly exercised more, for Mr. Sanderson was an enthusiastic +student of Romany. The influence of the assistant master +was soon seen after Groome went up to Oxford. He was +ploughed for his <!-- page 279--><a name="page279"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 279</span>“Smalls,” and, remaining +up for part of the “Long,” he went one night to a +fair at Oxford at which many gipsies were present—an +incident which forms an important part of his gipsy story +‘Kriegspiel.’ Groome at once struck up an +acquaintance with the gipsies at the fair. It occurred also +that Mr. Sanderson, after Groome had left Ipswich School, used to +go and stay at Monk Soham Rectory every summer for fishing; and +this tended to focus Groome’s interest in Romany +matters. At Göttingen, where he afterwards went, he +found himself in a kind of Romany atmosphere, for, owing perhaps +to Benfey’s having been a Göttingen man, Romany +matters were still somewhat rife there in certain sets.</p> +<p>The period from his leaving Göttingen to his appearance +in Edinburgh in 1876 as a working literary man of amazing +activity, intelligence, and knowledge is the period that he spent +among the gipsies. And it is this very period of wild +adventure and romance that it is impossible for me to dwell upon +here. But on some future occasion I hope to write something +about his adventures as a Romany Rye. His first work was on +the ‘Globe Encyclopædia,’ edited by Dr. John +Ross. Even at that time he was very delicate and subject to +long wearisome periods of illness. During his work on the +‘Globe’ he fell seriously ill in the middle of the +letter <i>S</i>. Things were going <!-- page 280--><a +name="page280"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 280</span>very badly +with him; but they would have gone much worse had it not been for +the affection and generosity of his friend and colleague Prof. H. +A. Webster, who, in order to get the work out in time, sat up +night after night in Groome’s room, writing articles on +Sterne, Voltaire, and other subjects.</p> +<p>Webster’s kindness, and afterwards the kindness of Dr. +Patrick, endeared Edinburgh and Scotland to the “Tarno +Rye.” As Webster was at that time on the staff of +‘The Encyclopædia Britannica,’ I think, but I +do not know, that it was through him that Groome got the +commission to write his article ‘Gypsies’ in that +stupendous work. I do not know whether it is the most +important, but I do know that it is one of the most thorough and +conscientious articles in the entire encyclopædia. +This was followed by his being engaged by Messrs. Jack to edit +the ‘Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland,’ a splendid +work, which on its completion was made the subject of a long and +elaborate article in <i>The Athenæum</i>—an article +which was a great means of directing attention to him, as he +always declared. Anyhow, people now began to inquire about +Groome. In 1880 he brought out ‘In Gypsy +Tents,’ which I shall describe further on. In 1885 he +was chosen to join the staff of Messrs. W. & R. +Chambers. It is curious to think of the “Tarno +Rye,” perhaps the most variously equipped <!-- page +281--><a name="page281"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +281</span>literary man in Europe, after such adventures as his, +sitting from 10 to 4 every day on the sub-editorial stool. +He was perfectly content on that stool, however, owing to the +genial kindness of his colleague. As sub-editor under Dr. +Patrick, and also as a very copious contributor, he took part in +the preparation of the new edition of ‘Chambers’s +Encyclopædia.’ He took a large part also in +preparing ‘Chambers’s Gazetteer’ and +‘Chambers’s Biographical Dictionary.’ +Meanwhile he was writing articles in the ‘Dictionary of +National Biography,’ articles in <i>Blackwood’s +Magazine</i> and <i>The Bookman</i>, and also reviews upon +special subjects in <i>The Athenæum</i>.</p> +<p>This was followed in 1887 by a short Border history, crammed +with knowledge. In 1895 his name became really familiar to +the general reader by his delightful little volume ‘Two +Suffolk Friends’—sketches of his father and his +father’s friend Edward FitzGerald—full of humour and +admirable character-drawing.</p> +<p>In 1896 he published his Romany novel +‘Kriegspiel,’ which did not meet with anything like +the success it deserved, although I must say he was himself in +some degree answerable for its comparative failure. The +origin of the story was this. Shortly after our intimacy I +told him that I had written a gipsy story dealing with the East +Anglian gipsies and the Welsh gipsies, but that it had been so +dinned <!-- page 282--><a name="page282"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 282</span>into me by Borrow that in England +there was no interest in the gipsies that I had never found heart +to publish it. Groome urged me to let him read it, and he +did read it, as far as it was then complete, and took an +extremely kind view of it, and urged me to bring it out. +But now came another and a new cause for delay in my bringing out +‘Aylwin’: Groome himself, who at that time knew more +about Romany matters than all other Romany students of my +acquaintance put together, showed a remarkable gift as a +<i>raconteur</i>, and I felt quite sure that he could, if he set +to work, write a Romany story—<i>the</i> Romany story of +the English language. He strongly resisted the idea for a +long time—for two or three years at least—and he was +only persuaded to undertake the task at last by my telling him +that I would never bring out my story until he brought out one +himself. At last he yielded, told me of a plot, a capital +one, and set to work upon it. When it was finished he sent +the manuscript to me, and I read it through with the greatest +interest, and also the greatest care. I found, as I +expected to find, that the gipsy chapters were simply perfect, +and that it was altogether an extremely clever romance; but I +felt also that Groome had given no attention whatever to the +structure of a story. Incidents of the most striking and +original kind were introduced at the wrong places, and this made +them interesting no <!-- page 283--><a name="page283"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 283</span>longer. So persuaded was I +that the story only needed recasting to prove a real success that +I devoted days, and even weeks, to going through the novel, and +indicating where the transpositions should take place. +Groome, however, had got so entirely sick of his novel before he +had completed it that he refused absolutely to put another +hour’s work into it; for, as he said, “the writing of +it had already been a loss to the pantry.”</p> +<p>He sent it, as it was, to an eminent firm of publishers, who, +knowing Groome and his abilities, would have willingly taken it +if they had seen their way to do so. But they could not, +for the very reasons that had induced me to recast it, and they +declined it. The book was then sent round to publisher +after publisher with the same result; and yet there was more fine +substance in this novel than in five ordinary stories. It +was at last through the good offices of Mr. Coulson Kernahan that +it was eventually taken by Messrs. Ward & Lock; and, although +it won warm eulogies from such great writers as George Meredith, +it never made its way. Its failure distressed me far more +than it distressed Groome, for I loved the man, and knew what its +success would have been to him. Amiable and charming as +Groome was, there was in him a singular vein of dogged obstinacy +after he had formed an opinion; and he not only refused to recast +his story, but <!-- page 284--><a name="page284"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 284</span>refused to abandon the absurd name +of ‘Kriegspiel’ for a volume of romantic gipsy +adventure. I suspect that a large proportion of people who +asked for ‘Kriegspiel’ at Mudie’s and +Smith’s consisted of officers who thought that it was a +book on the German war game.</p> +<p>I tried to persuade him to begin another gipsy novel, but +found it quite impossible to do so. But even then I waited +before bringing out my own prose story. I published instead +my poem in which was told the story of Rhona Boswell, which, to +my own surprise and Groome’s, had a success, +notwithstanding its gipsy subject. Then I brought out my +gipsy story, and accepted its success rather ungratefully, +remembering how the greatest gipsy scholar in the world had +failed in this line. In 1899 he published ‘Gypsy +Folk-Tales,’ in which he got the aid of the first Romany +scholar now living, Mr. John Sampson. And this was followed +in 1901 by his edition of ‘Lavengro,’ which, +notwithstanding certain unnecessary carpings at +Borrow—such, for instance, as the assertion that the word +“dook” is never used in Anglo-Romany for +“ghost”—is beyond any doubt the best edition of +the book ever published. The introduction gives sketches of +all the Romany Ryes and students of Romany, from Andrew Boorde +(<i>c.</i> 1490–1549) down to Mr. G. R. Sims and Mr. David +MacRitchie. During this time it <!-- page 285--><a +name="page285"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 285</span>was +becoming painfully perceptible to me that his physical powers +were waning, although for two years that decadence seemed to have +no effect upon his mental powers. But at last, while he was +working on a book in which he took the deepest interest—the +new edition of ‘Chambers’s Cyclopædia of +English Literature’—it became manifest that the +general physical depression was sapping the forces of the +brain.</p> +<p>But it is personal reminiscences of Groome that I have been +invited to write, and I have not yet even begun upon these. +Our close friendship dated no further back than 1881—the +year in which died the great Romany Rye. Indeed, it was +owing to Borrow’s death, coupled with Groome’s +interest in that same Romany girl Sinfi Lovell, whom the eloquent +Romany preacher “Gipsy Smith” has lately been +expiating upon to immense audiences, that I first became +acquainted with Groome. Although he has himself in some +magazine told the story, it seems necessary for me to retell it +here, for I know of no better way of giving the readers of <i>The +Athenæum</i> a picture of Frank Groome as he lives in my +mind.</p> +<p>It was in 1881 that Borrow, who some seven years before went +down to Oulton, as he told me, “to die,” achieved +death. And it devolved upon me as the chief friend of his +latest years to write an obituary notice of him in <i>The +Athenæum</i>. Among the many interesting letters <!-- +page 286--><a name="page286"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +286</span>that it brought me from strangers was one from Groome, +whose name was familiar to me as the author of the article +‘Gypsies’ in the ‘Encyclopædia +Britannica.’ But besides this I had read ‘In +Gypsy Tents,’ a picture of the very kind of gipsies I knew +myself, those of East Anglia—a picture whose photographic +truth had quite startled me. Howsoever much of matter of +fact may be worked into ‘Lavengro’ (and to no one did +Borrow talk with so little reticence upon this delicate subject +as to me during many a stroll about Wimbledon Common and Richmond +Park), I am certain that his first-hand knowledge of gipsy life +was quite superficial compared with Groome’s during the +nine years or so that he was brought into contact with them in +Great Britain and on the Continent. Hence a book like +‘In Gypsy Tents’ has for a student of Romany subjects +an interest altogether different from that which Borrow’s +books command; for while Borrow, the man of genius, throws by the +very necessities of his temperament the colours of romance around +his gipsies, the characters of ‘In Gypsy Tents,’ +depicted by a man of remarkable talent merely, are as realistic +as though painted by Zola, while the wealth of gipsy lore at his +command is simply overwhelming.</p> +<p>At that time—with the exception of Borrow and the late +Sir Richard Burton—the only man of letters with whom I had +been <!-- page 287--><a name="page287"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 287</span>brought into contact who knew +anything about the gipsies was Tom Taylor, whose picture of +Romany life in an anonymous story called ‘Gypsy +Experiences,’ which appeared in <i>The Illustrated London +News</i> in 1851, and in his play ‘Sir Roger de +Coverley,’ is not only fascinating, but on the whole +true. By-the-by, this charming play might be revived now +that there is a revived interest in Romany matters. George +Meredith’s wonderful ‘Kiomi’ was a picture, I +think, of the only Romany chi he knew; but genius such as his +needs little straw for the making of bricks. The letter I +received from Groome enclosed a ragged and well-worn cutting from +a forgotten anonymous <i>Athenæum</i> article of mine, +written as far back as 1877, in which I showed acquaintance with +gipsydom and described the ascent of Snowdon in the company of +Sinfi Lovell, which was afterwards removed bodily to +‘Aylwin.’ Here is the cutting:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“We had a striking instance of this some +years ago, when crossing Snowdon from Capel Curig, one morning, +with a friend. She was not what is technically called a +lady, yet she was both tall and, in her way, handsome, and was +far more clever than many of those who might look down upon her; +for her speculative and her practical abilities were equally +remarkable: besides being the first palmist of her time, she had +the reputation of being able to make more clothes-pegs in an +hour, and sell <!-- page 288--><a name="page288"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 288</span>more, than any other woman in +England. The splendour of that ‘Snowdon +sunrise’ was such as we can say, from much experience, can +only be seen about once in a lifetime, and could never be given +by any pen or pencil. ‘You don’t seem to enjoy +it a bit,’ was the irritated remark we could not help +making to our friend, who stood quite silent and apparently deaf +to the rhapsodies in which we had been indulging, as we both +stood looking at the peaks, or rather at the vast masses of +billowy vapours enveloping them, as they sometimes boiled and +sometimes blazed, shaking, whenever the sun struck one and then +another, from amethyst to vermilion, ‘shot’ now and +then with gold. ‘Don’t injiy it, don’t +I?’ said she, removing her pipe. ‘<i>You</i> +injiy talking about it, <i>I</i> injiy lettin’ it soak +in.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Groome asked whether the gipsy mentioned in the cutting was +not a certain Romany chi whom he named, and said that he had +always wondered who the writer of that article was, and that now +he wondered no longer, for he knew him to be the writer of the +obituary notice of George Borrow. Interested as I was in +his letter, it came at a moment when the illness of a very dear +friend of mine threw most other things out of my mind, and it was +a good while before I answered it, and told him what I had to +tell about my Welsh gipsy experiences and the adventure on +Snowdon. I got another letter from him, and this was the +beginning of a charming correspondence. After a while <!-- +page 289--><a name="page289"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +289</span>I discovered that there were, besides Romany matters, +other points of attraction between us. Groome was the son +of Edward FitzGerald’s intimate friend Robert Hindes +Groome, Archdeacon of Suffolk. Now long before the great +vogue of Omar Khayyam, and, of course, long before the +institution of the Omar Khayyam Club, there was a little group of +Omarians of which I was a member. I need not say here who +were the others of that group, but it was to them I alluded in +the ‘Toast to Omar Khayyam,’ which years afterwards I +printed in <i>The Athenæum</i>, and have since reprinted in +a volume of mine.</p> +<p>After a while it was arranged that he was to come and visit us +for a few days at The Pines. When it got wind in the little +household here that another Romany Rye, a successor to George +Borrow, was to visit us, and when it further became known that he +had travelled with Hungarian gipsies, Roumanian gipsies, +Roumelian gipsies, &c., I don’t know what kind of wild +and dishevelled visitor was not expected. Instead of such a +guest there appeared one of the neatest and most quiet young +gentlemen who had ever presented themselves at the door. No +one could possibly have dared to associate Bohemia with +him. As a friend remarked who was afterwards invited to +meet him at luncheon, “Clergyman’s son—suckling +for the Church, was stamped upon him from head to +foot.” <!-- page 290--><a name="page290"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 290</span>I will not deny that so respectable +a looking Romany Rye rather disappointed The Pines at +first. At that time he was a little over thirty, but owing +to his slender, graceful figure, and especially owing to his +lithe movements and elastic walk, he seemed to be several years +younger.</p> +<p>The subject of Welsh gipsies, and especially of the Romany chi +of Swindon, made us intimate friends in half an hour, and then +there were East Anglia, Omar Khayyàm, and Edward +FitzGerald to talk about!—a delightful new friend for a man +who had so lately lost the only other Romany Rye in the +world. Owing to his youthful appearance, I christened him +there and then the “Tarno Rye,” in remembrance of +that other “Tarno Rye” whom Rhona Boswell +loved. I soon found that, great as was the physical +contrast between the Tarno Rye and the original Romany Rye, the +mental contrast was greater still. Both were shy—very +shy; but while Borrow’s shyness seemed to be born of +wariness, the wariness of a man who felt that he was famous and +had a part to play before an inquisitive world, Groome’s +shyness arose from a modesty that was unique.</p> +<p>As a philologist merely, to speak of nothing else, his +equipment was ten times that of Borrow, whose temperament may be +called anti-academic, and who really knew nothing +thoroughly. But while Borrow was for ever <!-- page +291--><a name="page291"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +291</span>displaying his philology, and seemed always far prouder +of it than of his fascinating powers as a writer of romantic +adventures, Groome’s philological stores, like all his +other intellectual riches, had to be drawn from him by his +interlocutor if they were to be recognized at all. Whenever +Borrow enunciated anything showing, as he thought, exceptional +philological knowledge or exceptional acquaintance with matters +Romany, it was his way always to bring it out with a sort of +rustic twinkle of conscious superiority, which in its way, +however, was very engaging. From Groome, on the contrary, +philological lore would drop, when it did come, as unconsciously +as drops of rain that fall. It was the same with his +knowledge of Romany matters, which was so vast. Not once in +all my close intercourse with him did he display his knowledge of +this subject save in answer to some inquiry. The same thing +is to be noticed in ‘Kriegspiel.’ Romany +students alone are able by reading between the lines to discover +how deep is the hidden knowledge of Romany matters, so full is +the story of allusions which are lost upon the general +reader—lost, indeed, upon all readers except the very +few. For instance, the gipsy villain of the story, Perun, +when telling the tale of his crime against the father of the hero +who married the Romany chi whom Perun had hoped to marry, makes +allusion thus to the dead woman: <!-- page 292--><a +name="page292"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 292</span>“And +then about her as I have named too often to-day.” Had +Borrow been alluding to the Romany taboo of the names of the +dead, how differently would he have gone to work! how eager would +he have been to display and explain his knowledge of this +remarkable Romany superstition! The same remark may be made +upon the gipsy heroine’s sly allusion in +‘Kriegspiel’ to “Squire Lucas,” the +Romany equivalent of Baron Munchausen, an allusion which none but +a Romany student would understand.</p> +<p>Before luncheon Groome and I took a walk over the common, and +along the Portsmouth Road, through the Robin Hood Gate and across +Richmond Park, where Borrow and I and Dr. Hake had so often +strolled. I wondered what the Gryengroes whom Borrow used +to foregather with would have thought of my new friend. In +personal appearance the two Romany Ryes were as unlike as in +every point of character they were unlike. Borrow’s +giant frame made him stand conspicuous wherever he went, +Groome’s slender, slight body gave an impression of great +agility; and the walk of the two great pedestrians was equally +contrasted. Borrow’s slope over the ground with the +loose, long step of a hound I have, on a previous occasion, +described; Groome’s walk was springy as a gipsy +lad’s, and as noiseless as a cat’s.</p> +<p>Of course, the talk during that walk ran very <!-- page +293--><a name="page293"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +293</span>much upon Borrow, whom Groome had seen once or twice, +but whom he did not in the least understand. The two men +were antipathetic to each other. It was then that he told +me how he had first been thrown across the gipsies, and it was +then that he began to open up to me his wonderful record of +experiences among them. The talk during that first out of +many most delightful strolls ran upon Benfey, and afterwards upon +all kinds of Romany matters. I remember how warm he waxed +upon his pet aversion, “Smith of Coalville,” as he +called him, who, he said, for the purposes of a professional +philanthropist, had done infinite mischief to the gipsies by +confounding them with all the wandering cockney raff from the +slums of London. On my repeating to him what, among other +things, the Romany chi before mentioned said to me during the +ascent of Snowdon from Capel Curig, that “to make +<i>kairengroes</i> (house-dwellers) of full-blooded Romanies was +impossible, because they were the cuckoos of the human race, who +had no desire to build nests, and were pricked on to move about +from one place to another over the earth,” Groome’s +tongue became loosened, and he launched out into a monologue on +this subject full of learning and full, as it seemed to me, of +original views upon the Romanies.</p> +<p>As an instance of the cuckoo instincts of the true Romany, he +told me that in North America—<!-- page 294--><a +name="page294"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 294</span>for which +land, alas! so many of our best Romanies even in Borrow’s +time were leaving Gypsey Dell and the grassy lanes of old +England—the gipsies have contracted a habit, which is +growing rather than waning, of migrating southward in autumn and +northward again in spring. He then launched out upon the +subject of the wide dispersion of the Romanies not only in +Europe—where they are found from almost the extreme north +to the extreme south, and from the shores of the Bosphorus to the +shores of the Atlantic Ocean—but also from north to south +and from east to west in Asia, in Africa, from Egypt to the very +south of the Soudan, and in America from Canada to the River +Amazon. And he then went on to show how intensely migratory +they were over all these vast areas.</p> +<p>So absorbing had been the gipsy talk that I am afraid the +waiting luncheon was spoilt. The little luncheon party was +composed of fervent admirers of Sir Walter Scott—bigoted +admirers, I fear, some of our present-day critics would have +dubbed us; and it chanced that we all agreed in pronouncing +‘Guy Mannering’ to be the most fascinating of all the +Wizard’s work. Of course Meg Merrilies became at once +the centre of the talk. One contended that, great as Meg +was as a woman, she was as a gipsy a failure; in short, that +Scott’s idea of the Scottish gipsy woman was +conventional—<!-- page 295--><a name="page295"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 295</span>a fancy portrait in which are +depicted some of the loftiest characteristics of the Highland +woman rather than of the Scottish gipsy. The true romany +chi can be quite as noble as Meg Merrilies, said one, but great +in a different way. From Meg Merrilies the talk naturally +turned upon Jane Gordon of Kirk Yetholm, Meg’s prototype, +who, when an old woman, was ducked to death in the River Eden at +Carlisle. Then came the subject of Kirk Yetholm itself, the +famous headquarters of the Scotch Romanies; and after this it +naturally turned to Kirk Yetholm’s most famous inhabitant, +old Will Faas, the gipsy king, whose corpse was escorted to +Yetholm by three hundred and more donkeys. And upon all +these subjects Groome’s knowledge was like an inexhaustible +fountain; or rather it was like a tap, ready to supply any amount +of lore when called upon to do so.</p> +<p>But it was not merely upon Romany subjects that Groome found +points of sympathy at The Pines during that first luncheon; there +was that other subject before mentioned, Edward FitzGerald and +Omar Khayyàm. We, a handful of Omarians of those +antediluvian days, were perhaps all the more intense in our cult +because we believed it to be esoteric. And here was a guest +who had been brought into actual personal contact with the +wonderful old Fitz. As a child of eight he had seen +him—talked with him—<!-- page 296--><a +name="page296"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 296</span>been patted +on the head by him. Groome’s father, the Archdeacon +of Suffolk, was one of FitzGerald’s most intimate +friends. This was at once a delightful and a powerful link +between Frank Groome and those at the luncheon table; and when he +heard, as he soon did, the toast to “Omar +Khayyàm,” none drank that toast with more gusto than +he. The fact is, as the Romanies say, that true friendship, +like true love, is apt to begin at first sight. But I must +stop. Frequently when the “Tarno Rye” came to +England his headquarters were at The Pines. Many and +delightful were the strolls he and I had together. One day +we went to hear a gipsy band supposed to be composed of Roumelian +gipsies. After we had listened to several well-executed +things Groome sauntered up to one of the performers and spoke to +him in Roumelian Romany. The man, although he did not +understand Groome, knew that he was speaking Romany of some kind, +and began speaking in Hungarian Romany, and was at once responded +to by Groome in that variety of the Romany tongue. Groome +then turned to another of the performers, and was answered in +English Romany. At last he found one, and one only, in the +band who was a Roumelian gipsy, and a conversation between them +at once began.</p> +<p>This incident affords an illustration of the width as well as +the thoroughness of Groome’s <!-- page 297--><a +name="page297"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 297</span>knowledge +of Romany matters. I have affirmed in ‘Aylwin’ +that Sinfi Lovell—a born linguist who could neither read +nor write—was the only gipsy who knew both English and +Welsh Romany. Groome was one of the few Englishmen who knew +the most interesting of all varieties of the Romany tongue. +But latterly he talked a great deal of the vast knowledge of the +Welsh gipsies, both as to language and folklore, possessed by Mr. +John Sampson, University Librarian at Liverpool, the scholar who +did so much to aid Groome in his last volume on Romany subjects, +called ‘Gypsy Folk-Tales.’ It therefore gives +me the greatest pleasure to end these very inadequate words of +mine with a beautiful little poem in Welsh Romany by Mr. Sampson +upon the death of the “Tarno Rye.” In a very +few years Welsh Romany will become absolutely extinct, and then +this little gem, so full of the Romany feeling, will be greatly +prized. I wish I could have written the poem myself, but no +man could have written it save Mr. Sampson:—</p> +<h4>STANYAKERÉSKI.</h4> +<blockquote><p>Romano ráia, prala, jinimángro,<br +/> + Konyo chumeráva to chīkát,<br /> +Shukar java mangi, ta mukáva<br /> + Tut te ’jâ kamdóm me—kushki +rat!</p> +<p>Kamli, savimáski, sas i sarla,<br /> + Baro zī sas tut, sar, tarno rom,<br /> +Lhatián i jivimáski patrin,<br /> + Ta līán o purikeno drom.</p> +<p><!-- page 298--><a name="page298"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +298</span>Boshadé i chiriklé veshténdi;<br +/> + Sanilé ’pre tuti chal ta chai;<br /> +Mūri, pūv ta pāni tu kamésas<br /> + Dudyerás o sonakó lilaí.</p> +<p>Palla ’vena brishin, shil, la baval:<br /> + Sa’o divés tu murshkinés +pīrdán:<br /> +Ako kino ’vesa, rat avéla,<br /> + Chēros sī te kesa tiro tan.</p> +<p>Parl o tamlo merimásko pāni<br /> + Dava tuki miro vast, ta so<br /> +Tu kamésas tire kokoréski<br /> + Mai kamáva—“Te sovés +mīstō!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Translation</i>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">to francis +hindes groome</span>.</p> +<blockquote><p>Scholar, Gypsy, Brother, Student,<br /> + Peacefully I kiss thy forehead,<br /> +Quietly I depart and leave<br /> + Thee whom I loved—“Good +night.”</p> +<p>Sunny, smiling was the morning;<br /> + A light heart was thine, as, a youth,<br /> +Thou dids’t strike life’s trail<br /> + And take the ancient road.</p> +<p>The birds sang in the woods,<br /> + Man and maid laughed on thee,<br /> +The hills, field, and water thou didst love<br /> + The golden summer illuminated.</p> +<p>Then come the rain, cold, and wind,<br /> + All the day thou hast tramped bravely.<br /> +Now thou growest weary, night comes on.<br /> + It is time to make thy tent.</p> +<p>Across death’s dark stream<br /> + I give thee my hand; and what<br /> +Thou wouldst have desired for thyself<br /> + I wish thee—mayst thou sleep well.</p> +</blockquote> +<h3><!-- page 299--><a name="page299"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 299</span>II.</h3> +<p>Although novelists, dramatists, and poets are particularly +fond of trying to paint the gipsies, it cannot be said that many +of them have been successful in their delineations. And +this is because the inner and the outer life of a proscribed race +must necessarily be unlike each other. Meg Merrilies is no +more a gipsy than is Borrow’s delightful Isopel +Berners. Among the characteristic traits of the Romany +woman, Meg does no doubt exhibit two: a wild poetic imagination +and a fearlessness such as women rarely display. But no one +who had been brought into personal contact with gipsy women could +ever have presented Meg Merrilies as one of them. In the +true Romany chi poetic imagination is combined with a homeliness +and a positive love of respectability which are very +curious. Not that Meg, noble as she is, is superior to the +kind of heroic woman that the Romany race is capable of +producing. Indeed, the great speciality of the Romanies is +the superiority of the women to the men—a superiority which +extends to everything, unless, perhaps, we except that gift of +music for which the gipsies are noticeable. Even in Eastern +<!-- page 300--><a name="page300"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +300</span>Europe—Russia alone excepted—where gipsy +music is so universal that, according to some writers, every +Hungarian musician is of Romany extraction, it is the men and +not, in general, the women who excel. This, however, may +simply be the result of opportunity and training.</p> +<p>It is not merely in intelligence, in imagination, in command +over language, in breadth of view regarding the +“Gorgio” world around them, that the Romany women, in +Great Britain at least, leave the men far behind. In +character this superiority is equally noticeable. To +imagine a gipsy hero is not easy. The male gipsy is not +without a certain amount of courage, but it soon gives way, and +in a physical conflict between a gipsy and an Englishman it +always seems as though ages of oppression have damped its +virility. Although some of our most notable prizefighters +have been gipsies, it used to be well known in times when the +ring was fashionable that a gipsy could not be relied upon +“to take punishment” with the stolid indifference of +an Englishman or a negro, partly, perhaps, because his more +highly strung nervous system makes him more sensitive to +pain. The courage of a gipsy woman, on the other hand, has +passed into a proverb; nothing seems to daunt her, and yet she +will allow her husband, a cowardly ruffian himself, perhaps, to +strike her without returning the blow. Wife-beating, +however, is not common among the gipsies. It may possibly +<!-- page 301--><a name="page301"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +301</span>be the case that some of the fine qualities of the +gipsy woman are the result of that very barrenness of fine +qualities among the men of which we have been speaking. The +lack of masculine chivalry among the men may in some measure +account for the irresistible impulse among the women for taking +their own part without appealing to the men for aid. Also +this may account for the strong way in which a gipsy woman is +often drawn to the “Tarno Rye,” the young English +gentleman of whom Matthew Arnold was thinking when he wrote the +‘Scholar-Gipsy,’ and her fidelity to whom is so +striking. It is often in such relations as these with the +Tarno Rye that the instinct of monogamy in the Romany woman is +seen. The unconquerable virtue of the Romany chi was often +commented upon by Borrow; and, indeed, every observer of gipsy +life is struck by it.</p> +<p>Seeing that the moment the Romanies are brought into contact +with the Gorgio world they adopt a method of approach entirely +different from the natural method—natural to them in +intercourse with each other—it is perhaps no wonder that +the popular notion of the gipsy girl, taken mainly from the +tradition of the stage, is so fantastically wrong. With +regard to the stage, no characters in the least like gipsies ever +appeared on the boards, save the characters in Tom Taylor’s +<!-- page 302--><a name="page302"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +302</span>‘Sir Roger de Coverley.’ In the eyes +of the novelist, as well as in the eyes of the playwright, +devilry seems to be the chief characteristic of the gipsy +woman. The fact is, however, that in the average gipsy +woman as she really exists there is but little devilry. +“Romany guile,” which is well defined in the gipsy +phrase as “the lie for the Gorgios,” does not prevent +gipsy women from retaining some of the most marked +characteristics of childhood throughout their lives. This, +indeed, is one of their special charms. In his desire to +depict the supposed devilry of the Romany woman, Prosper +Mérimée has perpetrated in ‘Carmen’ the +greatest of all caricatures of the gipsy girl. A mere +incarnation of lust and bloodthirstiness is more likely to exist +in any other race than in the Romanies, who have a great deal of +love as a sentiment and comparatively very little of love as a +movement of animal desire.</p> +<p>In G. P. R. James’s ‘Gipsy’ (1835) there are +touches which certainly show some original knowledge of Romany +life and character. The same may, perhaps, be said of +Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Bird of Passage,’ but the +pictures of gipsy life in these and in all other novels are the +merest daubs compared with the Kiomi of George Meredith’s +story ‘Harry Richmond.’ Not even Borrow and +Groome, with all their intimate knowledge of gipsy life, ever +painted a more vigorous picture of the Romany chi <!-- page +303--><a name="page303"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +303</span>than this. The original was well known in the art +circles of London at one time, and was probably known to +Meredith, but this does not in any way derogate from the +splendour of the imaginative achievement of painting in a few +touches a Romany girl who must, one would think, live for +ever.</p> +<p>Between some Englishmen and gipsy women there is an +extraordinary attraction—an attraction, we may say in +passing, which did not exist between Borrow and the gipsy women +with whom he was brought into contact. Supposing Borrow to +have been physically drawn to any woman, she would have been of +the Scandinavian type; she would have been what he used to call a +Brynhild. It was tall blondes he really admired. +Hence, notwithstanding his love of the economies of gipsy life, +his gipsy women are all mere “scenic +characters”—they clothe and beautify the scene; they +are not dramatic characters. When he comes to delineate a +heroine, Isopel Berners, she is physically the very opposite of +the Romany chi—a Scandinavian Brynhild, in short.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">THE END</p> +<h2>Footnotes:</h2> +<p><a name="footnote15"></a><a href="#citation15" +class="footnote">[15]</a> Mr. Coulson Kernahan.</p> +<p><a name="footnote17"></a><a href="#citation17" +class="footnote">[17]</a> The writer is much indebted to +Mr. Coulson Kernahan for this story and much other information of +life at “The Pines.”</p> +<p><a name="footnote18"></a><a href="#citation18" +class="footnote">[18]</a> ‘My Reminiscences,’ +by Lord Ronald Gower.</p> +<p><a name="footnote25"></a><a href="#citation25" +class="footnote">[25]</a> Of August 13, 1881. By Mr. +A. Egmont Hake.</p> +<p><a name="footnote32"></a><a href="#citation32" +class="footnote">[32]</a> Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, +art-critic, who poisoned a number of his relatives for their +money, a contributor to <i>The London Magazine</i> and exhibitor +at the Royal Academy. He died a convict in Tasmania in +1852.</p> +<p><a name="footnote33"></a><a href="#citation33" +class="footnote">[33]</a> C. G. Leland (“Hans +Breitmann”), on whom Borrow’s books had “an +incredible influence,” and caused him to take up the study +of things Romany.</p> +<p><a name="footnote34"></a><a href="#citation34" +class="footnote">[34]</a> Louis Jeremiah Abershaw, better +known as Jerry Abershaw, 1773?-1795, a notorious highwayman, who +was the terror of the roads from London to Wimbledon and +Kingston. Borrow with characteristic perversity persisted +in regarding the redoubtable Jerry as a hero, in spite of the +fact that he justly met his death on the gallows.</p> +<p><a name="footnote50"></a><a href="#citation50" +class="footnote">[50]</a> ‘Life, Writings, and +Correspondence of George Borrow.’ Derived from +Official and other Authentic Sources. By William I. Knapp, +Ph.D. With Portrait and Illustrations. 2 vols. +(Murray.)</p> +<p><a name="footnote60"></a><a href="#citation60" +class="footnote">[60]</a> The “reader” was +Richard Ford, author of the ‘Handbook for Travellers in +Spain,’ &c. He subsequently became Burrow’s +warm admirer and friend.</p> +<p><a name="footnote77"></a><a href="#citation77" +class="footnote">[77]</a> ‘Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as +Designer and Writer.’ Notes by William Michael +Rossetti. (Cassell and Co.)</p> +<p><a name="footnote104"></a><a href="#citation104" +class="footnote">[104]</a> ‘Letters of Dante Gabriel +Rossetti to William Allingham, 1854–1870.’ By +George Birkbeck Hill. (Fisher Unwin.)</p> +<p><a name="footnote108"></a><a href="#citation108" +class="footnote">[108]</a> The year of Queen +Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.</p> +<p><a name="footnote132"></a><a href="#citation132" +class="footnote">[132]</a> ‘Alfred, Lord Tennyson: a +Memoir.’ By his Son. 2 vols. +(Macmillan).</p> +<p><a name="footnote156"></a><a href="#citation156" +class="footnote">[156]</a> “My father’s +words.”</p> +<p><a name="footnote168"></a><a href="#citation168" +class="footnote">[168]</a> <i>The Times</i>, October 18, +1876.</p> +<p><a name="footnote195"></a><a href="#citation195" +class="footnote">[195]</a> ‘New Poems.’ +By Christina Rossetti. Edited by William Michael +Rossetti. (Macmillan & Co.)</p> +<p><a name="footnote231"></a><a href="#citation231" +class="footnote">[231]</a> ‘Poems, Dramatic and +Lyrical.’ By Lord de Tabley. Second +Series. (Lane.)</p> +<p><a name="footnote263"></a><a href="#citation263" +class="footnote">[263]</a> ‘A Dream of John Ball and +a King’s Lesson.’ ‘Signs of +Change.’</p> +<p><a name="footnote264"></a><a href="#citation264" +class="footnote">[264]</a> Written in 1888.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD FAMILIAR FACES***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 27025-h.htm or 27025-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/7/0/2/27025 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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